Literature and ‘Reality’: The Transformation of the Jutland Heath

There has been a tendency in recent geographical writing on literature to focus upon the presumed perspicuity of the individual author. Geographers write of the ‘heightened perception of the artist and his ability to communicate that experience’. ¹ This chapter, however, is concerned not so much with the individual’s apprehension of geographic reality as it actually is, but with literature’s social function in envisioning reality as it is not but ought to be, and with its potential, thereby, for stimulating change. This shift in emphasis is related to a theoretical stance which questions the focus upon the perceptual abilities of the individual. The significance of the distinction between these two approaches to literature will be illustrated by the case of the nineteenth-century transformation to forest and field of the heaths of Jutland, Denmark, as seen in the light of several recent geographical literary studies. A theoretical introduction will therefore be followed by a discussion of the aspects of these recent studies which are pertinent to the perspective on literature and geography which is suggested by the case of the Jutland heath.