ABSTRACT
Taking Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 as its tutor text, this article traces how narrative, through descriptions and representations of all kinds of experiential spaces, can present us with what French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux has ventured to call “the great outdoors.” The great outdoors is but another term for the more traditional philosophical notion of the absolute. It is no coincidence that Meillassoux introduces the absolute in spatial terms. After all, the absolute is precisely that which eludes, exceeds, and goes beyond the particular, the concrete, and the relative, opening up another space beyond any and every given space, including the space of reason—it is not just outdoors; it is the great outdoors, absolutely outside and alien. The chapter introduces the notion of pseudo-paraleptic anamorphosis to discuss narrative's capacity to make tangible this otherwise intangible realm of the great outdoors.
