Affective Geographies by Paul Michael Johnson

Affective Geographies by Paul Michael Johnson

For Miguel de Cervantes, to narrate a Mediterranean experience is to necessarily speak of an emotional experience. Affective Geographies takes as its point of departure the premise that literature is as influential in constructing the Mediterranean as are its geographic, climatic, or economic features. As the writer with the most vast and varied Mediterranean experience of his era, Cervantes is exceptionally well-suited for the critical task of recovering the literary Mediterranean.

Engaging with the interdisciplinary fields of Mediterranean studies, affect theory, and the history of emotion, Paul Michael Johnson reads Cervantes’s texts alongside the affective structures that inscribe the Mediterranean as a space of conflict, commerce, expansion, and empire. In particular, he argues that Cervantes’s writing, with its uncommon focus on the Moorish, Islamic, and North African experience, can serve to realign misconceptions about the Mediterranean we have inherited today. Affective Geographies proposes that, with a more than four-hundred-year history of impacting the hearts and minds of readers, Cervantes’s works constitute a literary longue durée, ramifying beyond fiction to alter the popular imaginary and long-term cultural landscape.

"Johnson is adept at distinguishing the portrayal of the inwardness and interiority of Cervantine characters from counterparts in 19th-century European realismA highlight of the volume—one of many—is discussion of the encounter, in part 2 of Don Quixote, of Sancho Panza and the Morisco Ricote as a source of commentary on humor. Analyzing feelings is a challenge. Johnson has done his homework and far more. His approach to the Mediterranean takes the reader all over the map of criticism, metacriticism, interdisciplinarity, and the Cervantine corpus."

- E. H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University (CHOICE)

"This fascinating and original scholarly contribution to Early Modern literary studies – presented with an exquisite written expression – not only invites readers to reconsider many canonical works by Miguel de Cervantes, but also helps to lay the groundwork for a new direction of scholarly inquiry into a wide array of classical fiction."

- Philip Allen, Midwestern State University (Hispanófila)

Paul Michael Johnson is an associate professor of Hispanic Studies at DePauw University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781487507510
ISBN 10	1487507518
Title	Affective Geographies
Author	Paul Michael Johnson
Series	Toronto Iberic
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	University of Toronto Press
Year published	2021-02-19
Number of pages	328
Prizes	Winner of 2020 Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award The American Political Science Association Canadian Politics Section 2020 (United States), Winner of 2022 Outstanding Acedemic Title awarded by Choice 2022 (United States)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.