BUCH
The City as Performance
The Contemporary American Novel and the Power of the Senses
American Studies – A Monograph Series, Bd. 288
2018
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Bibliografische Daten
Abstract
Throughout literary history the city has taken on many different shapes and forms: from functioning as evocative setting or powerful metaphor to playing the role of a fictional character to presenting itself as a complex text in need of decoding. Continuing this versatile history, the novels discussed in this study represent recent attempts in American literature to once again reimagine the city. Based on close readings of several works published between 1997 and 2011, this volume sheds light on strategies employed in contemporary American literature to reaffirm the city as a lived, creative space: Shaped by the inhabitants who in their movements through the fictional urban environment artistically perform their own versions of the metropolis, the cities narrated in these novels celebrate the power of the urban individual. Most of all, they speak to the importance of the senses as a constitutive force in writing and experiencing urban space.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
| Zwischenüberschrift | Seite | Aktion | Preis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | Cover | ||
| Titel | 3 | ||
| Imprint | 4 | ||
| Table of Contents | 5 | ||
| Acknowledgments | 7 | ||
| 1 Introduction | 9 | ||
| 2 A Walk Through the City in Literature | 19 | ||
| 2.1 The City as Setting | 20 | ||
| 2.2 The City as Metaphor | 24 | ||
| 2.3 The City as Character | 29 | ||
| 2.4 The City as Text | 33 | ||
| 3 The City as Performance | 37 | ||
| 3.1 Exploring New Avenues | 38 | ||
| 3.2 The Spatial Turn | 44 | ||
| 3.3 The Sensory Turn | 52 | ||
| 3.4 Flânerie, or the Art of Walking | 61 | ||
| 3.5 Performing the City | 70 | ||
| 4 Touching the City | 75 | ||
| 4.1 Cosmopolis: The Failing Body | 77 | ||
| 4.2 Cosmopolis: States of Contiguity | 87 | ||
| 4.3 Lowboy: Contiguity Continued | 100 | ||
| 4.4 Lowboy: Subterranean Flânerie | 108 | ||
| 5 Hearing the City | 119 | ||
| 5.1 Architectures of Sound | 121 | ||
| 5.2 Homer and Langley: Aural Flânerie | 124 | ||
| 5.3 Homer and Langley: Building New York | 132 | ||
| 5.4 Tropic of Orange: Manzanar Murakami, Conductor | 145 | ||
| 5.5 Tropic of Orange: A Transnational Symphony | 150 | ||
| 6 Smelling the City | 161 | ||
| 6.1 The Space of Smell | 162 | ||
| 6.2 Chronic City: Urban Simulacra | 169 | ||
| 6.3 Chronic City: Deconstructing New York | 176 | ||
| 6.4 Chronic City: A Whiff of the Real | 183 | ||
| 7 Seeing the City | 199 | ||
| 7.1 The Impossible Art of Seeing | 200 | ||
| 7.2 Open City: Blind Fields | 204 | ||
| 7.3 Open City: Travels into Urban Obscurity | 212 | ||
| 7.4 Gimme the Money: Motorized Flânerie | 227 | ||
| 7.5 Gimme the Money: A Psychogeography of New York | 236 | ||
| 8 By Way of Conclusion: Synecdoche, New York | 253 | ||
| Bibliography | 267 | ||
| Backcover | 287 |
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