Doctoral Thesis
“Yet We Do Always Find Ourselves in Places”: Towards a Critical Reading Practice for Literary Implacement
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Murdoch University
2025
Abstract
This thesis develops an original framework for literary implacement as a mode of critical reading concerned with exploring the dynamic between character and place in narrative fiction. My understanding of place prioritises the literary aspects that animate a character’s ongoing negotiation of their situation and their surroundings. ‘Implacement’, a concept developed by philosopher and phenomenologist Edward S. Casey, denotes the inextricable relation between human beings and place. Casey’s emphasis on the importance of place in our lives is reflected in my assertion that analysis of the character–place dynamic in narrative fiction is vital to imagining the ways in which literature might speak to experiences of dislocation—and possibilities of recovery—in our precarious world. By adapting Casey’s notion of ‘implacement’ to a literary context, I outline and then undertake a practice of close reading attuned to the ways in which narrative features construct and convey a character’s experience in and through the sense of place depicted in the story world. I draw out the sociopolitical, cultural, and historical particularities shaping a character’s narrative construction in relation to place in order to grapple with concerns pertaining to, for example, sexual and gender-based violence, the dispossession and return of ancestral lands, carceral regimes, Earth’s survival, and the (un)silencing of marginalised voices. In doing so, I illustrate the value of literary implacement as an analytical lens through which ideas of place are set against larger conceptual questions, and also realised in a single line of text—in those textual moments that resonate, unsettle, and take hold of the critical reader. The thesis presents literary implacement as an interpretive practice that complements established and emerging fields of place-sensitive literary criticism, as well as one that sets its own course in pursuit of reimagining the significance of place in our lives.
Details
- Title
- “Yet We Do Always Find Ourselves in Places”: Towards a Critical Reading Practice for Literary Implacement
- Authors/Creators
- Danielle I Gilson
- Contributors
- Anne Surma (Supervisor) - Murdoch University, School of Humanities, Arts and Social SciencesAlys Daroy (Supervisor) - Murdoch University, School of Humanities, Arts and Social SciencesHelena Grehan (Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Murdoch University; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Identifiers
- 991005818349707891
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
- Resource Type
- Doctoral Thesis
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