Sémiotique urbaine et géocritique

Abstract

This study aims, on the one hand, to examine the conditions of emergence of two recently created disciplines, both of which are in line with the epistemological mutation of the increasing interest for spatiality in the humanities — urban semiotics, of semiological allegiance, and geocriticism, of literary obedience — and, on the other hand, to evaluate the appropriateness of finding a common ground between these two. After retracing the genealogy of both approaches, a conceptual coalescence and common fields of application have been found for the two methodologies. Indeed, in spite of the different perspectives and objects of analysis (uses and practice for semiotics, texts and myths for geocriticism), they seem to share a common episteme, that is, the rootedness of the subject within an environment that he is supposed to invest with meaning in order to make it habitable. However, this world that spatially surrounds the subject does not necessarily coincide with the tangible world of reality. The thorny issue of a new referentialist paradigm in literature that takes over from an autotelic, immanentist approach is counterbalanced by the necessary consideration of the place imaginary, which challenges every kind of localisation and inventorisation on a map. The two approaches seem nevertheless to have arrived at a sufficient degree of maturity to exchange concepts and work in conjunction with one another. This synergy could be profitable to the humanities, suffering from a lack of legitimacy in a context of excessive relativism, and amidst a world in which urban reality and the conditions of the habitable are experiencing great changes.

Keywords

• space
• literary theory