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Comment
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Kate
Unregistered User
(1/27/02 9:02:13 pm)
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Imaginary Places--Questions!
Some time ago, there was a brief discussion here about a course--taught at the University of Texas, perhaps, in the Library Science Program?--about imaginary places and maps . . . I can't quite find it though. Does anyone remember some key word I could search the board with?
I'm teaching a class called Invisible Cities this semester, where students are reading novels all set in (completely) created/imagined places, and I am trying to gather some outside theory/criticism readings for them . . . essays about imaginary places, etc. Does anyone have any special piece of writing they like on this subject? I've found work by Foucault, Bachelard and Lippard on place that I like, but would love something a bit more accessible to my BFA students, perhaps non-fiction about imaginary places by a fiction writer . . .So many people on this board are experts on this as artists, and I wish you could all come to my class as guests!
(Students will create art depictions--whether paintings, models or photo-essays, etc--of the imaginary places in the novels as their projects for the class.)
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Karen
Unregistered User
(1/27/02 11:18:34 pm)
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Dictionary
Kate,
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head which fits your query is The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi, but I'm sure you know about it already. If you want to consider the subject from a mass media perspective, there's Popular Stories and Promised Lands: Fan Cultures and Symbolic Pilgrimages by Roger C. Aden (University of Alabama Press, 1999). I'm assuming that you're concentrating on imaginary places in twentieth century novels, but let me know if you're not- you mention both cities and Foucault above, so I immediately think of the panopticon- is imaginary architecture also of interest?
k.
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Kerrie
Registered User
(1/28/02 6:53:36 am)
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Re: Imaginary Places--Questions!
The word was "parageography" and one of my friends had taken that class there. If you go to and do a search for the word, it should bring up some descriptions. (I'll see if I can find the old link.)
Sugarplum dreams,
Kerrie
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kate
Unregistered User
(1/28/02 12:01:13 pm)
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Thanks
Kerrie, that was it! Thank you. (I owe you an email about your writing ideas, too. I know, I know, I'm the world's slowest correspondent, aren't I? Just consider it old-fashioned!)
And Karen, those are great suggestions. I'd forgotten about the Dictionary, which must have a useful introduction. I don't own the book but will try to get it from the library. Imaginary architecture is also definitely of interest, by the way--my brother teaches an architecture studio at RISD on exactly that, and he is sending me a reading list too. I'd love your thoughts.
The class reading list includes a variety of works--from Paradise Lost to The Tempest to Neverwhere to The Dispossessed to Dra__ and Lives of the Monster Dogs. It travels everywhere and nowhere! Today, we saw "Being John Malkovich" (consciousness as imaginary land--among other things).
Thanks again Kerrie and Karen, for your useful help!
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ZMethos
Registered User
(1/28/02 4:31:50 pm)
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Re: Parageography
A phrase coined by my professor, Dr. Douglass Parker of the Classics Department at UT. Quite a man! He'd been working on the creation of his own world, High Thefarie, since 1975! We got to read all his notes, which was really something. His writing assignments were quite amazing too, and we all ended up creating our own worlds as our final projects. (Bits and pieces of mine are on my page clio.ninemuses.com). Things we read for the class: The Odessey, Orlando, Narnia, Oz, Stephen King's The Gunslinger, Neverwhere. . . Easily the best class I took there, considering it launched me into my Master's thesis later on.
~M. Pepper
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Karen
Unregistered User
(1/28/02 9:50:34 pm)
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Consuming fantasies
Kate,
The Dictionary is well worth checking out. I've been thinking about Imaginary Architecture lately because of a piece I'm working on- it's a little difficult to summarise in fifteen words or less, but I'm interested in Orientalism and the great Victorian exhibition- this notion that you can comprehend (and possess) the incomprehensible by arranging it in a particular way in space. It's interesting that, at the same time as the bourgeois travel industry was really coming into its own- around the 1850s, various technological developments (the mass production of glass sheets, for instance) were allowing Europeans to construct these fantastical oases in their own cities- the architecture of the city changed radically- and, largely, the practical upshot was a commercial one, whether reflected in row upon row of gas-lit shop windows or in the cavernous halls of the universal expositions. The fantasy of The Crystal Palace is a fantasy of consumption. The exotic is, first and foremost, a source of produce and products.
So, given what seems to me to be the rather blatant connection between imaginary worlds/maps and colonial fantasies in earlier centuries, I'm wondering how these mythical lands develop in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as consummer dreams, if at all?
k.
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Annette
Unregistered User
(1/29/02 2:41:18 am)
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middle earth
How about this one, Visualizing Middle Earth by Michael Martinez? Here's the link at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738872547/thesurlalufairyt
Annette.
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Helen
Registered User
(1/29/02 7:17:45 am)
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Imaginary architecture ...
Kate, what a lovely description! Is it for the next book, or will it be a seperate article?
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Kate
Unregistered User
(1/29/02 11:53:02 am)
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!
Helen,
Much as I'd love to take credit for the great idea described above for an article, it is Karen's (who signed "K.")! I agree it is compelling.
Karen, have you read Jonathan Crary's excellent book, TECHNIQUES OF THE OBSERVER (MIT Press)? About Victorian visual games, the camera obscura, optical devices, etc? It might be relevant, and I think everyone should read it, anyway!
Kate
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Helen
Registered User
(1/29/02 12:35:52 pm)
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Re: !
Oops, my apologies to you both for the incorrect attribution! Not
enough sleep, I suppose. The questions stand, even if their direction
changes.
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Karen
Unregistered User
(1/29/02 7:15:13 pm)
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utopia
Kate,
Yes, I am familiar with Crary's Techniques of the Observer and I agree that everyone should read it too! I really love the part about Goethe's colour theory. Geoff Batchen's Burning with Desire is another one everyone should read- I have a strong theoretical interest in the development of photography, optical illusions, etc, you see. But I fear that this is all woefully off topic!
So I thought it might be a good idea to raise another point- are you considering utopian and distopian lands in the course?
Helen,
what I described above is a chapter in my Phd dissertation- so I
hope to God it might end up in a book! Thankyou for the compliment-
it's always good to know I haven't strayed too far "out there"!
How is your research going?
karen.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(2/1/02 2:07:49 pm)
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Imaginary Places
When discussing this topic, it seems remise not to include something of Jules Verne - i.e. Journey to the Center of the Earth
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Jess
Unregistered User
(2/1/02 2:11:47 pm)
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Oops
I don't know what happened. Only half of my message came through. I was in the process of suggesting to Karen that she look at some of Jules Verne's writings to see if her ideas were reflected in them. Especially, Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (which there is a great new annotated translation available - mid-90's).
Also, Kate, I was wondering if you are going to discuss More's Utopia and what about Kubrick's great film A Space Odyssey 2001 - admittedly not literature, but interesting concepts of imaginary places arise in the film.
I would love more on this topic.
Jess
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Midori
Unregistered User
(2/10/02 3:53:50 am)
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Calvino
Hey Kate,
Are you going to be looking at Calvino's "Invisible Cities"? It's a lovely work--full of imaginative descriptions along with enigmatic mathematical problems (another sort of "invisible and purely theoretical construction)--a reconstruction of sorts of Marco Polo's journeys. I also think Calvino wrote an essay about it--and the construction of fantastic places--I will have to hunt it down for you--and as you can tell from my almost near absence on the board I've been buried in work! I will try this week to see what I can find.
You are using some film--what about off the wall worlds, like "Brazil" (by Terry Gilliam)?
Karen--in looking at Orientalism and architecture, Said has a great section on Napolean and the pyramids in "Orientalism"--using the sign of ancient Egypt to give him a greater aura of power.
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Kerrie
Registered User
(2/11/02 4:12:12 pm)
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Mathematics...
Midori's post reminded me of a favorite (bear in mind, I was a Math/Science major): Flatland! It take Gulliver's Travels and changes the characters to lines, planes, spheres, etc. Quite an interesting take on pov.
Sugarplum dreams,
Kerrie
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oaken
mondream
Registered User
(2/13/02 5:51:04 pm)
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Re: Mathematics...
Midori,
Would it be possible that Calvino's essay is on the internet (by some strange and utterly random chance)? I had to read "Invisible Cities" last semester and loved it although i didn't realize that there was some mathmatical problem involved. i think I'm going to reread it again.
Thanks,
jill
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cloudshaper
Registered User
(2/24/02 3:35:28 am)
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Re: Imaginary Places--Questions!
Kate,
I taught a class at USC in the School of Architecture for seven years each fall called "Virtual Spaces", where I had the students create VR walkthroughs of cities and places from myth and legend.
I didn't teach it last year, but the year before we did Atlantis.
In addition to the wonderful Dictionary of Imaginary Spaces already mentioned, the Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were (Ingpen/Page), the more historical Encyclopedia of Mysterious Places (Ingpen/Wilkinson) and The Atlas of Legendary Places (Harpur/Westwood) were good references.
That was by far my favorite teaching experience (well, except one year....), I hope you have a great time with it!
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Elizabeth
Unregistered User
(3/20/02 1:06:07 pm)
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made-up places
This is a "children's" series, but the Cronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is completely made up and the book Into The Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Coville fits the criteria. That is if your looking for just anything.
Liz
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