Real or imagined geographical locations, landscapes, rooms and houses play an important role in literature. In addition to providing a narrative setting, fictional space might guide our interpretation of plot, serve as a metaphor for broader historical, sociological or psychological issues, or become a character in its own right. Ranging across a variety of literary periods and genres, this course will explore how works of fiction describe space and how these descriptions shape our responses. Authors and texts may range from the early English period to the present day, including Beowulf, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish, Jane Austen, Edgar Alan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, V.S. Naipaul, and so on.