Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
Journal issue | 55 | 2021
Research Article | Trespassing Boundaries in Wuthering Heights
Trespassing Boundaries in Wuthering Heights
Geographical and Environmental Perspectives
Abstract
The Spatial Turn as a transdisciplinary phenomenon in the Humanities was established in the 1990s, and, especially in the last few decades, geography seems to have pervaded critical analysis and language. According to contemporary geographical and environmental perspectives, the setting in narratives is not only a background defining the place where the plot is located but a complex system that is central to the construction of literary texts. Wuthering Heights (1847) provides an excellent case study. Emily Brontë’s novel is certainly characterized by its topography. Although different sources had been collected by the writer from a wide range of models across the country in Yorkshire, they were then reassembled to form a landscape that is both familiar and uncanny, self-consistent and reminiscent of real buildings and sceneries. Besides, the dynamics between displacement, departures and arrivals and the seeming immobility of the landscape is a crucial pattern of the novel. In Wuthering Heights, the natural world of the moors and its geographies are reminders of history and memory. Brontë’s weaving together of emotional stories into the moorlands suggests a mutual exchange between nature and culture. The writer constructs a textured geography representing the cycles of change, family history, and passion that have created that space.
Submitted: April 12, 2021 | Accepted: April 21, 2021 | Published July 29, 2021 | Language: en
Keywords Nature • Emily Brontë • Boundaries • Literary geography • Wuthering Heights
Copyright © 2021 Nicoletta Brazzelli. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOc/2499-1562/2021/09/005
