Spatial Perception and Genre Borders

Conference by Merja Polvinen, Senior Lecturer in English Philology, University of Helsinki, Former Erik Allardt Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, as part of the series "Borders" organized by the Netias network.

How do readers imagine the places and spaces of fiction? What kinds of qualities of text encourage us to generate spatial imaginations, and what makes such imaginations "vivid"? What happens when texts turn our assumptions and imaginings inside out?

Merja Polvinen approaches these questions via China Miéville's conceptual thriller The City & The City (2009), a story of two urban communities that maintain a border as unassailable as the Berlin Wall, but which consists only of conceptual and perceptual actions.

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