Geography and literature in the upper Catalan Pyrennees: foundations for a humanistic work method based on literature

Abstract

One of the objectives of humanistic geographical research is to achieve an understanding of the existential relations established between man and his environment and of his subjective interpretation of the structure of this environment, that is, the morphology and articulation of the places and spaces of which the living world of individuals or human groups is composed. This article includes an introduction to the use which is made, in the field of humanistic geography, of imaginative fiction as a perceptive document. It also explains the theoretical foundations of the geographical method of analysis of literature, and their application to a research project on the upper Catalan Pyrennees. This study aims to obtain an inside view of traditional society and the crisis which mountain areas suffer, through the subjective vision of the phenomenon which appears in creative writings or fiction (novels, short stories, etc. ) on the Pyrennees. The method applied demonstrates that authors influence society and that the sum of their works constitutes an existential sample of that society.