Westphal, Bertrand

Bertrand Westphal is Professor for Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of Limoges, where he also leads the research group “E.A. 1087 Espaces Humains et Interactions Culturelles”. He has developed an analytical approach called ‘geocriticism’, a concept that is quickly expanding as it is applied in studies of the representation of space in literature and the arts. He elaborated the fundamental principles of geocriticism in La Géocritique (2007) and Le Monde plausible (2011), two essays published in French with Minuit, Paris, and in English with Palgrave Macmillan, New York. A third volume, La Cage des méridiens, will be published in 2016. Westphal has applied the concept of geocriticism to the study of 1) Austrian literature, Austro-fictions. Une géographie de l’intime (Rouen, Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2010) and 2) Mediterranean literature, L’oeil de la Méditerranée. Une odyssée littéraire (éditions de l’Aube, 2005). Westphal previously examined the novelistic transpositions of the Gospels from a narratological perspective in Roman et évangile (Pulim, 2002).