The Labyrinth under Ash Tree Lane. Dwelling in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves
Abstract
Mark Z. Danielewski's 2000 novel House of Leaves revolves around a mysterious building that hides an apparently infinite subterranean labyrinth of supernatural origin. Through various typographic techniques that creatively leverage on the space of the printed page as a complex visual devices and textual artifices meant to create atmospheric effects, the author establishes what could be defined as a spatial condition. The reader’s experience is thus not neutral, since it deeply engages the embodied and affective spheres. In this paper, the analysis and discussion of these devices describes how, under some specific circumstances, the spatial dimension embedded in literature can indeed become inhabitable, sustaining the emergence of dwelling practices.
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