Space, Place and Mapping in Fiction: A Geocritical Study of Select Novels of Anita Nair

Abstract

This study examines the literary cartography of Anita Nair's novels, which consist of heterogeneous and interwoven spatial structures that have evolved from social, cultural, and geographical interactions. It also probes how Nair's narrative universe is structured in her fictional narratives and how spatial patterns and geographical identities are juxtaposed within them. Geocriticism, an interdisciplinary field in cultural and literary studies that focuses on geographical space, encompasses both aesthetics and politics, aiming to understand the ever-changing spatial relations that shape the world. It unlocks the possibilities of new literary readings that interpret complex spatial relations and embedded cultural patterns through various critical practices of geography, politics, history, and related fields. The geocritical methods and spatial critical practices formulated by Bertrand Westphal and Robert T. Tally are employed in this study to examine the issues of spatiality and the mapping of spaces and places in Anita Nair's fiction. This study identifies recurring motifs such as spatial and geographical emplacement, place attachment, and nostalgia, and probes their links to Nair's lived experiences. The study utilises maps to trace the spatial trajectories, rootedness, displacement, and reterritorialisation of characters, revealing Nair's sense of place and spatial consciousness. The study not only focuses on the literary cartography in Nair's works, which comprise diverse spatial structures influenced by social, cultural, and geographical factors, but also distinguishes between geospaces and literary spaces, revealing that while core narrative regions resemble real geospaces, other locations deviate significantly. It also examines the cultural patterns of Kerala as substrates of space and place in her novels, where cultural practices and symbols, as part of territorial identities, recur in her fictional narratives, producing cultural maps of locations that are the core regions of her narrative world.