When Form Constitutes the Evidence Base
Geography has systematically drawn on literary sources since at least the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1970s, however, the increasingly-used expression “Geography and Literature” was associated with humanistic geography. Some analysts even make the use of literary sources one of the criteria for defining what constitutes a humanistic approach to geography. In actual fact, geographical approaches to literary sources are pluralistic in nature, depending on whether the texts referred to are seen as having an archival, analytical or prompting function. This article looks initially at these three approaches before proposing another to circumscribe the role of literary texts. It first establishes a theoretical base, then draws on a number of examples to show the relevance of a fourth method, centered on the form or structure of the text. Our postulate is that an approach of this kind constitutes the most apposite instrument for effectively explaining the medial images that govern our sense of space as human beings.