This article presents a diachronic and theoretical overview of spatial approaches to literature in order to highlight their methodologies, objectives, differences and similarities. Starting with Mikhail Bakhtin’s and Yuri Lotman’s seminal studies on the chronotope and the semiosphere, the author then turns to the work of Henri Mitterand, Jean Weisgerber and Roland Bourneuf on the question of fictional space in novels. The main focus, however, are the new so called geo-centered approaches that have emerged since the 1990: literary geography, geocriticism, spatial narratology, geopoetics, la pensée-paysage, and ecocriticism.