Book Description

This book is a product of the XI International Conference on English Language and Literary Studies held in Montenegro in 2014. The “old spaces” were taken as a metaphorical tool for reintroducing a wide range of established topics with new approaches. Space was, thus, understood as physical, mechanical, continuous, linear, as measurable and symbolic, as subjective and relational, and as aesthetic. It was found on maps, in architecture, on theatre stages, in books, in hearts, in one’s identity, in time, and in theses and theories from the Aristotelian topos to Einstein’s construct of space-time. Therefore, the means of travel to these spaces and the forms the journeys take are also multifarious. However, so are the discursive strategies and their limitations when it comes to presenting the journeys and their destinations. The contributors to this volume represent a range of nationalities, and present research that either follows in the footsteps of other authors, in a literal or secondary literary journey to real geographical places, or observes the universal literary and old theoretical issues through new critical lenses. Indeed, they are often on both roads, witnessing how inextricable human efforts are to finding, identifying, and aestheticising oneself in relation to a particular space. Their contributions to this book expose how “spaces” were created and recreated through writing and symbolical representations in general. They also show how the images of these spaces have been changing in consent to the intentions of their visitors, and reveal that persistent and obstinate moment in a space that despite, or in spite of, changing perspectives, itself refuses to be changed. The book will encourage for further contributions to this expanding field in the humanities. In their numerous and distinct ways, the contributions to this particular book maintain that understanding how spaces are conceived and conceptualised is of pronounced importance in the globalized world in which cultures are gradually losing authenticities, while their spaces – geographical, tourist, spiritual, literary, aesthetic – are as reflective of the “visitors” as they are of the “hosts.”