Humanistic Geography and Literature (RLE Social & Cultural Geography): Essays on the Experience of Place

This book introduces the beginning student to the major concepts, materials and tools of the discipline of geography. While it presents geographic theory, as whole and for each of its parts, the chief emphasis is on concrete analysis and example rather than on abstraction, an approach which has proven more successful for undergraduate courses than those with a more heavily theoretical bias. The text was extensively re-written for the third edition, which enhanced its clarity and effectiveness, with expanded cartographic coverage.

This collection brings together pieces by distinguished geographers which examine how creative writers have handled space and place and what geographers can learn from a writer’s treatment of the environment. The increasing interest of geographers in creative literature forms an integral part of the humanistic approach to geography. Literature is an important secondary source of environmental knowledge, which complements the conventional sources of the social scientist and which is particularly apt for studying behaviour and environmental experience. This treatment of the fields of geography and literature will prove to be of enormous value to students in both disciplines.