In modern literary theory and philosophy, the concept of place, despite its permeating influence in many if not all aspects of existence, has been far too overlooked. In my thesis, I set out to redefine place in a way that encompasses this importance. I chose to ground my exploration in literature—specifically “Eveline” in James Joyce’s Dubliners, The Castle by Franz Kafka, and “Las ruinas circulares” in Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones—in order to then move outside of the texts to situate these works in their respective authorial realities and consider the influence of external, real place on intratextual place. To examine the extent of the relevance of each author’s own presence of place, I consider theories regarding the origin of art with the help of Aristotle’s Poetics, literary scholars who have focused on these authors, and theorists who have focused on the role of reality in fiction. Finally, with the help of Martin Heidegger’s Poetry, Language, Thought and my own analysis, I argue that there is not such a stark distinction between literature and reality, that art is neither merely imitation nor creation, author neither imitator nor creator, and in the end, I expand upon the important relationship between place, art, and being in order to formulate a new definition of place in a literary and aesthetic context.
