Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Time and Space are essential referents offered by the poetic construction. Without them there seems to be an experience of helpless circulation, involved by the mystery of details, like an incomplete memory and an eventual suspicion that the narrative has been constructed with a disruptive intention or, maybe, a mere provocation of the author. Despite the awareness of Space, in its dynamic interactions with the subject, a greater emphasis has been placed on Time. Only in 1980 did Space start to have a central significance, as a transdisciplinary phenomenon in the humanities. Lefevbre, Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault are cornerstones of this approach. From a theory of thought that claims the omnipresence of Space and a requited interest between Literature and Geography, new methods of analysis were born whose object of study is Space. The field of Literary Cartographies follows the experience of Space, using psychological and emotional elements, pre-existing or resulting from the progress of the characters. Following various coordinates – self-referential, social, and spatial, of mobility or absence of mobility, of the meeting or of the escape with the Other, we draw a map of emotions applied to “Painful Case” from Dubliners by Joyce. Focusing on the main characters, Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinoco, the paper aims to clarify the implications of Space in the representation of identity, observing maps of meaning of the relationships. This allows us to map a cartography of emotions where a ‘materializing memory’ subsists within the affection bonds or in their absence.