Description: Examines the influence of folk stories on the real spaces in which they are set.
This book takes a literary geographical approach to the study of folklore, exploring the complex relationships between people, narratives, and places as they emerge through belief, storytelling, and ritual practice. Drawing on human geography, folkloristics, and literary studies, it demonstrates how folk narratives inform and shape geographical imaginings, influencing lived experiences of actual-world environments. An examination of Yanagita Kunio's Tonō Monogatari, a volume of 119 folktales from the northeast of Japan, highlights the formative role folk narratives play in shaping regional identities and cultural memory. Unsettling Narratives identifies folklore as a key process through which place acquires meaning, thereby facilitating a deeper engagement with the intersections of text, space, and communal narratives. By emphasizing the spatial significance of folkloric storytelling, this book provides new methodological and theoretical pathways for literary geographers to explore the co-constitution of narrative and place across local, regional, and global scales.Brief description: James Thurgill is a specially appointed associate professor in the Department of English Language at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.