Beaumont, Alexander ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8154-3300 (2026) Literary Geography in Later Covid. Cardiff, University of Wales Press (Submitted)

Text Literary Geography in Later Covid (Manuscript).docx - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (275kB) Request a copy

Abstract

Literary Geography in Later COVID examines how the COVID‑19 pandemic has reshaped the practices, methods and conceptual self‑understanding of literary geography in the period following acute global confinement. Emerging from the field’s early pandemic interventions - most notably work published in the journal Literary Geographies during 2020 - the collection reflects on what remains, what has changed, and what cannot be resolved as literary geographers take stock at a historical remove. While treating the acute phase of the pandemic as a concluded event, the volume seeks to understand literary geography's “later COVID” as a condition marked by enduring consequences, altered relations and ongoing affective and methodological negotiation.

The chapters bring together established and emerging scholars to explore how literary geography was constrained, reconfigured and sometimes enabled by pandemic conditions. Contributions in the opening section address shifts in method and practice, including altered fieldwork, rethought walking methodologies, restricted access to books and the increased prominence of digital and sensory forms of reading. Subsequent chapters address textual encounters that reassess literary works in light of pandemic experience, tracing new forms of relationality, placemaking, solitude and narrative resonance across historical and contemporary texts.

Alongside more generative responses, the collection also makes space for ambivalence, limit and irresolution. Several chapters confront the ways in which pandemic conditions exposed vulnerability, finitude, and the failure of relational affirmation, insisting that not all limits are productive. Taken together, the volume argues that literary geography’s “later COVID” is neither a return to normal nor a simple legacy of innovation, but an ongoing reckoning with altered relations between texts, readers, places and scholarly practice itself.

Item Type:	Book
Status:	Submitted
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/14143

University Staff: Request a correction | RaY Editors: Update this record