Restoring Wonder: Mystical Counter-Mapping in the Work of Arthur Machen
The Welsh writer Arthur Machen (1863-1947) is now widely recognized as a literary precursor of psychogeography, both as a way of walking and as a study of the interaction between geography and psychology. Like their creator, many of his characters practise what Machen called “the art of wandering”,...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| 1. Verfasser: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
| Veröffentlicht: |
Angles
2026
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | The Welsh writer Arthur Machen (1863-1947) is now widely recognized as a literary precursor of psychogeography, both as a way of walking and as a study of the interaction between geography and psychology. Like their creator, many of his characters practise what Machen called “the art of wandering”, an art not unlike the situationist dérive in that it liberates the walker from the alienation of the everyday.This article explores Machen’s London writing, both fictional and non-fictional, to show how it ties in with his mystical agenda as a writer. The author and his fictional mouthpieces consistently voice their dislike of the disenchanted, de-spiritualized world they live in. As they participate in the disenchantment of space, maps and guidebooks are rejected in an explicit anti-map discourse. Furthermore, maps cannot render the porosity of space as perceived by the mystically inclined, for whom gateways into the unknown might appear almost anywhere. I argue that the reshaping of London in Machen’s work is an act of counter-mapping in that it opposes what Peter Ackroyd describes as “a secular view of the world”. |
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