Language, Individual & Society, Volume 11, 2017

Abstract: Setting in E. M. Forster’s novels is always subtle and intriguing, especially in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and A Room with a View (1908). In these two Italian novels, setting, especially Florence and Monteriano, assumes delicate relationship to the psychological development of the major characters. This article tries to construct the spatial text embedded in each of the two Italian novels so as to give validity to the presupposition that literary text of a place is always a re-creation of the physical one. The spatial text is constructed through the discussion of two interconnected issues: place and place-as-text. Verbal configurations of places often reflect the bias of the interpreter: the writer’s and even the characters’ reading of a place often give it a new property that transcends the original one. It is the perspective of the beholder that gives the place its form and meaning.