Stanford University Press Narrativized Space: Storification, Literary Form, and Urban Design

In Narrativized Space, Aaron Santesso examines a phenomenon that is at least passingly familiar to most of us: space arranged so as to create the feeling of moving through a story. This book analyzes the implementation of narrativized space, a demarcated and sequentialized area that gradually reveals an argument, claim, or story to the person passing through it. Santesso follows the history of this form from the eighteenth century to the modern day, especially as realized within four institutions: landscape gardens, zoos, museums, and amusement parks. As the book reveals, each institution shows a new step in the development of this phenomenon, and each is especially influenced by a particular literary genre. The design of twentieth-century zoo exhibits, for example, reflects the rising popularity of adventure stories, while the theme park has a special relationship with Fantasy and SciFi narratives. The implementation of narrativized space has special relevance to the modern city, and the book discusses both the past and the future of narrativized space as an urban planning strategy. An interdisciplinary work that moves between literary studies, geography, and urban studies, Narrativized Space shows how narrative theory and formalist analysis can offer insight into the operation of real-world story-structures, and makes a case for the value of literary-critical expertise to urban planning and design.