[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-597361-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":80,"doc-detail-597361-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":73,"head_meta":75,"extra_data":77,"updated_unix":79},105,"en","walking-towards-the-past-loss-and-place-in-jane-urquharts-a-map-of-glass","Walking Towards the Past - Loss and Place in Jane Urquhart’s A Map of Glass","","A Map of Glass is analyzed through Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic concepts of loss, mourning, and subjectivity, linking the disappearance of place to historical memory. The paper frames the author’s personal experience of relocation and first-time encounter with Ontario as an interpretive lens for the novel’s themes of emplacement, displacement, and change. It argues that recovery of lost historical pasts depends on re-membering stories, mapping place through narrative, and exploring how language and sign systems allow mourning to succeed.",{"@graph":14,"@context":72},[15,34,55],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/","Literature",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/walking-towards-the-past-loss-and-place-in-jane-urquharts-a-map-of-glass/597361/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/walking-towards-the-past-loss-and-place-in-jane-urquharts-a-map-of-glass/597361.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Blue Pony","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-22","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":22},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",{"@type":56,"mainEntity":57},"FAQPage",[58,64,68],{"name":59,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":61},"How does Kristeva connect loss and mourning to subjectivity and history?","Question",{"text":62,"@type":63},"Kristeva’s framework links separation from an original object to abjection, then loss and mourning. This process supports entry into language and allows a historical world to be sustained rather than lost.","Answer",{"name":65,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":66},"What role does “lost nature” play in the analysis of A Map of Glass?",{"text":67,"@type":63},"The paper treats lost nature as a lost historical past, exploring how the novel examines loss of place, memory, love, nature, and even language. It argues that recovery happens through re-membering stories.",{"name":69,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":70},"How does mapping function in the novel’s portrayal of place?",{"text":71,"@type":63},"The analysis highlights a theme of mapping that develops alongside a pedagogical relationship between the protagonists. Reconstructing stories enables transformation through “telling,” while also showing place’s transitory nature.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":74,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":76,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":78,"site_id":7},597361,1792656660,{"code":4,"msg":81,"data":82},"success",[83,87,90,94,99,104,109,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":84,"show_sort_weight":85,"slug":86},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":88,"slug":89},80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":91,"show_sort_weight":92,"slug":93},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":95,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":96,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":98},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":100,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":101,"show_sort_weight":102,"slug":103},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":105,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":106,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":108},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":110,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":95,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":81,"data":131},{"doc_id":78,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":26,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":22,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},962090760266,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Walking Towards the Past: Loss and Place in  \nJane Urquhart’s A Map of Glass  \nSusan K. Moore  \nThe country was to him a living being, developing under his eyes, and the history of its past was to be discovered from the conditions of its present.1  \nIn this paper I examine the notions of loss and place in relation to the mourning of our personal and historical pasts.2 In doing so, I draw upon the psychoanalytical writings of Julia Kristeva in an analysis of Jane Urquhart’s 2005 novel A Map of Glass. I read A Map of Glass in the winter of 2006, just after having submitted the final draft of my dissertation to my examination committee for oral defense. My doctoral dissertation3 investigated Kristevan psychoanalytical and literary theory and how the processes of separation, loss and idealization are connected to “lost nature”—and how, in Kristevan thought, nature is a historical past. Thus, as I read the novel I was particularly interested in how the themes of loss and mourning are explored in Urquhart’s text.  \nMy inquiry into this topic and Urquhart’s novel took on greater personal significance when, upon completion of my oral exam, I accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. In April 2006 I went to Toronto for the very first time and purchased a house near the shores of Lake Ontario. This is where Urquhart sets her story, describing and documenting, within the pages of her novel, the history of the early settlers and the timber industry. In this sense, Urquhart’s novel literally became, for me, an instructional map and guide to the place and people of Ontario.  \nThe story is also about emplacement, displacement, and change—themes that would profoundly impact my life as my family and I prepared for the move from Calgary to Ontario in the spring of 2006. As a result of the sudden developments in my own life, this paper evolved as an accumulation of fragments of thoughts and impressions collected while in the midst of traveling back and forth between Ontario and Alberta as we relocated, our lived-experience mirroring a central theme of the novel—the transitory nature of place and people’s lives. However, for the sake of this paper there are three main topics I wish to explore.  \nFirst, I wish to discuss the Kristevan notion of lost nature as a lost historical past. Urquhart’s novel is an in-depth exploration into loss—loss of place, loss of nature, loss of love, loss of memory, and even loss of language itself—and the necessity for the recovery of loss, and therefore our historical past, through the re-membering of stories. Thus, this novel both examines the notion of, and provides an excellent example of, “spaces [that] can tell stories and unfold histories...through artistic and literary practices.” I also wish  \n62 Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 13 (2), 2008  \nto examine the theme of the “mapping” of place in the novel, as well as the unlikely pedagogical relationship that develops between the two central protagonists, Sylvia and Jerome, as she reconstructs the stories of her ex-lover’s life and her own, and he becomes transformed in the “telling.” My hope is that this analysis will raise further questions about how the disappearance of place and the mourning of this loss “interrupt and transform how we live and learn together.”  \nKristeva and Loss  \nKristeva’s conception of the imaginary is a vital locus for her thinking on subjectivity and history. This thinking makes a strong commitment to revealing the hazards of being ordained to a merely linguistic universe, and so losing a world of nature, for this is also to lose a historical world.4  \nMy reading of A Map of Glass begins with Kristeva’s psychoanalytical writingson loss. Kristeva argues that there is an “original” object (which she associates with the maternal feminine) from which the pre-verbal subject must separate in order to achieve individuation. This separation, according to Kristeva, involves a vi","cbCaicDEiaXU8j6t","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaicDEiaXU8j6t","pdf",143835,17,"English","# Walking Towards the Past\n## Loss and Place in Jane Urquhart’s A Map of Glass\n# Kristeva and Loss","[{\"question\":\"How does Kristeva connect loss and mourning to subjectivity and history?\",\"answer\":\"Kristeva’s framework links separation from an original object to abjection, then loss and mourning. This process supports entry into language and allows a historical world to be sustained rather than lost.\"},{\"question\":\"What role does “lost nature” play in the analysis of A Map of Glass?\",\"answer\":\"The paper treats lost nature as a lost historical past, exploring how the novel examines loss of place, memory, love, nature, and even language. It argues that recovery happens through re-membering stories.\"},{\"question\":\"How does mapping function in the novel’s portrayal of place?\",\"answer\":\"The analysis highlights a theme of mapping that develops alongside a pedagogical relationship between the protagonists. Reconstructing stories enables transformation through “telling,” while also showing place’s transitory nature.\"}]","Walking Towards the Past - Loss and Place in Jane Urquhart’s A Map of Glass | PDF",1792084870,26]