Northwestern, 2018. ISBN 978-0-8101-3697-7 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8101-3697-1 (e-book). 272 p. $34. 95.
In The Written World, Jeffrey N. Peters argues that geographic space may be understood as a foundational, originating principle of literary creation. By way of an innovative reading of chora, a concept developed by Plato in the Timaeus and often construed by philosophical tradition as “space,” Peters shows that canonical literary works of the French seventeenth century are guided by what he calls a “chorological” approach to artistic invention. In analyses of well-known authors such as Boileau, Corneille, Molière, Racine, d’Urfé, and Lafayette, he demonstrates that the apparent absence of physical space in seventeenth-century literary depiction indicates a subtle engagement with, rather than a rejection of, evolving principles of cosmological understanding. Space is not absent in these works so much as transformed in keeping with contemporaneous developments in early modern natural philosophy.
http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/written-world