Novels, Maps, Modernity

Eric Bulson is Associate Professor of English at Claremont Graduate University, US.

• List of Figures. Acknowledgements. Introduction: Orienting, Disorienting the Novel 1. On Getting Oriented 2. Melville’s Zig-Zag World-Circle 3. Joyce’s Geodesy 4. Pynchon’s Baedeker Trick 5. On Getting Lost Notes. Bibliography. Index

"Bulson has written a volume…that provides lucid and imaginative observations on the novelistic representation of place from the mid-nineteenth century works of Charles Dickens and Herman Melville to late twentieth-century fiction by Thomas Pynchon and W.G. Sebald. Bulson’s point of departure is the seldom acknowledged importance that documents of geographical orientation—most notably maps and guide books—have played in the writing, reading, and criticism of fiction. As a work of literary criticism, Novels, Maps, Modernity is well researched, provocative, and highly readable. Not only does it offer fresh readings of three of the most widely studied novels in the Anglo-American canon, but it provides new ways of looking at any novelistic representation of geographical place." –Jon Hegglund, Washington State University, Modern Philology