Robert T. Tally Jr.

In his book Spatiality, Robert T. Tally Jr establishes a spatial criticism that is based, in his discourse, on the re-representation of fantasy spaces and the expansion of the representation of virtual and possible spaces in the future. And then he emphasizes, in his viewpoint, spatial studies as an interdisciplinary field, as well as their current rise in contemporary literary and artistic criticism in postmodernism and beyond.

In more detail, Tally presents narrative works that dealt with place experimentally, such as the imagining of lines and shadows and the manifestation of space within Ahab in Melville's Moby-Dick novel, and the transcendent literary manifestation of the invisible cities of Calvino. Also, he presents Mikhail Bakhtin's blending of temporal and spatial indicators in his critical term chronotope, the signification of the existential strangeness according to Jean-Paul Sartre and Heidegger, the formation of spaces of knowledge and power by Michel Foucault, the circularity of space and its cultural breadth in Edward Said's perspective, and Umberto Eco's assertion of understanding the real through the imaginary, the image of the marginal street wanderer in the complex city according to De Certeau, the connection of space with the cultural significations of gender according to Doreen D. Massey, the cognitive cultural perspective related to the complexity of the postmodern state of Frederick Jameson's perspective and the specialty of imagination and forming poetic image and metaphor according to Gaston Bashlard; Therefore, I see that the literary and art critic can benefit from all these philosophies that concerned the place in his study of the text or the work of art as a transdisciplinary spatial study.

Additionally, Robert Tally presents contemporary studies and viewpoints of place in the twenty-first century, including the reconstruction of maps through the repeated elements and signs in discourse within a new discursive structure according to Moretti, the plurality of aesthetic, cultural and social viewpoints of space as well as the plurality of its sense-perception according to Westphal, and Talley's new perspective, which enhances the blending of cartography with a narrative that includes probable tales, impressions and imagination, as well as enhances the expansion of the productivity of possible and virtual spaces with details that mimic historical and geographical data but in different fantasy and narrative contexts.

Consequently, I note that Tally built his discourse on a major inferential argument which was based on the validity of the hypothesis of the relationship of the map to the narrative as a patch of data, news, imagination and perceptions, as well as the wide real space. Then the result becomes the originality of the overlap and the expansion in the production of another space that is always possible; Therefore, Tally’s speech acts came within the category of promises with new narrative spatial images and the representations of methodical tools of spatial criticism, while they included the category of expressions that reveal his supporting of the rise of spatial turn and also confirmed that he reinforces the directives by the encouragement of building new interactions between narrative fantasy spaces.

Finally, I think that Robert T. Tally Jr's book Spatiality represents a basic stage in the context of the rising and development of spatial criticism in our civil moment.

Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam

Literary Critic and Art Critic… (meer)