Abstract:
Graham Swift’s Waterland (1983), which marks the zenith of Swift’s literary career is
an outstanding novel with respect to its intricate structure in questioning the prob-
lems of narrative. The novel which brings together the elements of familial history,
autobiography, natural history and gothic, foregrounds geography as an essentail
point of reference in order to discuss the topic of history and historiography.
The aim of this paper is to expose the metaphorical meanings that are assigned to
geography by Graham Swift. The setting of the novel, Fens located on the east of
England, provides a rich material to the novelist, for the region is a marshy one that
challenges human endeavor to shape it. The natural geography, which stands for re-
ality, is in a constant struggle with the attempts to shape it, which stands for narra-
tive. That is why, it can be argued that Swift plans to lay bare the basic insufficiency
of the narrative in a postmodern impulse and this paper will show how geography is
made use of in order to substantiate this idea.
