Landscapes and Narratives: Compositions and the Walking Body

Abstract

This paper explores how landscapes are narrated through the activity of walking. It follows the footsteps of walkers as they traverse different kinds of terrains in different circumstances and aims to examine how the walking body and the landscape as entwined entities shape each other. The focus is on narrative compositions and how they appear in the landscape through the course of walking. The paper starts by exploring two different types of compositions and then analyses how walking narratives are composed through the connections and disconnections of the walking body with the surroundings, creating a narrative landscape of absences and presences.

Key Words:

• Walking
• landscape
• narrative compositions
• connecting and disconnecting

Notes

The project ‘Sensing Risk: Driver-Walker and Walker-Driver Interactions in the City’ was funded by the ESRC and led by Dr Fiona Magowan, School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University, Belfast.