Abstract: Spatial criticism is a general term for spatial literary theory, geocriticsm, social spatial criticism, literary geography and so on. The connection between space and literary criticism has long witnessed such predecessors as Blanchot’s literary space and Bachelard’s poetics of space. In view of this, Robert Tally Jr.’s thought on spatial literary criticism, inherited and developed from Jameson’s cognitive mapping theory, is without doubt a typical case of  “spatial turn” in humanities, a process of making spatial issues prominent in literary and cultural studies. Tally expressed the idea that his spatial criticism was quite different from Westphal’s interdisciplinary geocriticism and he attached greater importance to literature. For geocriticism or spatial criticism, the most effective way is to interconnect the “real” space, the “imaginative” space and the space in reader’s mind together, as can be examined in Homer’s epics and Old Testament. In addition, Tally holds conservative attitude towards GIS approach to humanities, arguing that “human” is the key to humanities. At the very beginning of his new book Topophrenia, Tally points out that “everyone already knows what a map is and what it is used for, yet the map is also a muchcontested object or metaphor in critical theory and beyond.” A map is viewed in this way, what about spatial criticism?

Key words: Key words： spatial turn, Robert Tally Jr., geocriticism, literary cartography