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Location, and in a broader sense, the complex representation of space constitutes a key issue in John Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy and Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe trilogy. Both authors chronicle the suburban life of their male protagonists in the Eastern United States from 1959 to the turn of the century. The aim of this thesis is to derive from seven novels (and the novella Rabbit Remembered) how the main characters perceive space and how they construe their sense of place. Relying on the method of close reading, this study examines Updike’s and Ford’s literature within the discourse of the male protagonists’ white middle class world. This dissertation takes a socio-spatial approach to Updike’s and Ford’s multivolume fiction and shows in what ways space serves as an organizing principle of their texts. With regard to the writing and reading of Updike’s and Ford’s landscapes, this study draws on the critical work by Robert T. Tally Jr., who differentiates between “literary cartography” and “literary geography” in his monograph Spatiality. In their fiction, Updike and Ford create a “literary cartography” by meticulously mapping their main characters’ surroundings. By analogy, this dissertation represents a “literary geography” gained through a spatial reading of their texts. Crucial to this research project was a triadic reading of both authors’ literature. First, the chapter on (sub)urban space investigates how the characters cognitively map space. Second, this study probes the representation of social space. In this context, the state of community life and the structure of civic engagement are examined. The third pillar of the triadic reading of space focuses on the protagonists’ private sphere and scrutinizes the representation of domestic space. The nexus between these three fields of investigation determines the main characters’ idea of home and their sense of place. This study contributes to the field of spatiality in literary criticism, and it encourages a triadic reading of suburban literature written from ...
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