The book stems from the belief that scholars should actively engage with the areas of humanities significantly captured in the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Lebkowska applies literary-studies, anthropological, and cultural-studies methods to focus on three categories: soma, affect, and imagination. She is particularly interested in corporeality not only as an interpretative and research category but also as a category that strictly correlates with an individual's changing epistemological and cultural situation. The book focuses on creative acts described as indelibly connected with an affect of disruption by a sudden impulse or contact with the external. Readers will find chapters related to the vision of the future in the history of literature, imagined geography, and the ambiguously idealized representation of the world.