Literature and the Peripheral City

Literature and the Peripheral City
Author: Jason Finch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2015-05-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1137492880

Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and numerous cities.

Literature and the Peripheral City

Literature and the Peripheral City
Author: Jason Finch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2015-05-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1137492880

Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and numerous cities.

The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies

The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies
Author: Lieven Ameel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 630
Release: 2022-08-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000605620

Over the past decades, the growing interest in the study of literature of the city has led to the development of literary urban studies as a discipline in its own right. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies provides a methodical overview of the fundamentals of this developing discipline and a detailed outline of new directions in the field. It consists of 33 newly commissioned chapters that provide an outline of contemporary literary urban studies. The Companion covers all of the main theoretical approaches as well as key literary genres, with case studies covering a range of different geographical, cultural, and historical settings. The final chapters provide a window into new debates in the field. The three focal issues are key concepts and genres of literary urban studies; a reassessment and critique of classical urban studies theories and the canon of literary capitals; and methods for the analysis of cities in literature. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies provides the reader with practical insights into the methods and approaches that can be applied to the city in literature and serves as an important reference work for upper-level students and researchers working on city literature. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space

The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space
Author: Robert Tally Jr.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317596943

The "spatial turn" in literary studies is transforming the way we think of the field. The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space maps the key areas of spatiality within literary studies, offering a comprehensive overview but also pointing towards new and exciting directions of study. The interdisciplinary and global approach provides a thorough introduction and includes thirty-two essays on topics such as: Spatial theory and practice Critical methodologies Work sites Cities and the geography of urban experience Maps, territories, readings. The contributors to this volume demonstrate how a variety of romantic, realist, modernist, and postmodernist narratives represent the changing social spaces of their world, and of our own world system today.

Literary Second Cities

Literary Second Cities
Author: Jason Finch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2017-11-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319627198

This book brings together geographers and literary scholars in a series of engagements near the boundaries of their disciplines. In urban studies, disproportionate attention has been given to a small set of privileged ‘first’ cities. This volume problematizes the dominance of such alpha cities, offering a wide perspective on ‘second cities’ and their literature. The volume is divided into three themed sections. ‘In the Shadow of the Alpha City’ problematizes the image of cities defined by their function and size, bringing out the contradictions and contestations inherent in cultural productions of second cities, including Birmingham and Bristol in the UK, Las Vegas in the USA, and Tartu in Estonia. ‘Frontier Second Cities’ pays attention to the multiple and trans-national pasts of second cities which occupy border zones, with a focus on Narva, in Estonia, and Turkish/Kurdish Diyarbakir. The final section, ‘The Diffuse Second City’, examines networks the diffuse secondary city made up of interlinked small cities, suburban sprawl and urban overspill, with literary case studies from Italy, Sweden, and Finland.

Rethinking Peripheral Modernisms

Rethinking Peripheral Modernisms
Author: Katia Pizzi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2024-02-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3031355466

This collection of essays reappraises the contributions made by modernist movements from regions generally regarded as peripheral or semi-peripheral to a global aesthetic of Modernism. It particularly focuses on European semi-peripheries, combining theoretical chapters and individual case studies to examine the cultural and aesthetic complexities of so-called peripheral modernisms. Contributing to research on the ‘transnational turn’ in New Modernist Studies, the volume takes recent scholarship on postcolonial modernisms one step further by exploring a broader geopolitical expanse than the (formerly) colonised regions under global capitalism. It highlights the local and translocal specificities of modernist movements from regions such as Eastern and Central Europe and the Mediterranean to offer new insights into the concept of global modernism.

The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City

The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City
Author: Jeremy Tambling
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 848
Release: 2017-02-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137549114

This book is about the impact of literature upon cities world-wide, and cities upon literature. It examines why the city matters so much to contemporary critical theory, and why it has inspired so many forms of writing which have attempted to deal with its challenges to think about it and to represent it. Gathering together 40 contributors who look at different modes of writing and film-making in throughout the world, this handbook asks how the modern city has engendered so much theoretical consideration, and looks at cities and their literature from China to Peru, from New York to Paris, from London to Kinshasa. It looks at some of the ways in which modern cities – whether capitals, shanty-towns, industrial or ‘rust-belt’ – have forced themselves on people’s ways of thinking and writing.

Literatures of Urban Possibility

Literatures of Urban Possibility
Author: Markku Salmela
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2021-05-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030709094

This book demonstrates how city literature addresses questions of possibility. In city literature, ideas of possibility emerge primarily through two perspectives: texts may focus on what is possible for cities, and they may present the urban environment as a site of possibility for individuals or communities. The volume combines reflections on urban possibility from a range of geographical and cultural contexts—in addition to the English-speaking world, individual chapters analyse possible cities and possible urban lives in Turkey, Israel, Finland, Germany, Russia and Sweden. Moreover, by engaging with issues such as city planning, mass housing, gentrification, informal settlements and translocal identities, the book shows imaginative literature at work outlining what possibility means in cities.

Living the urban periphery

Living the urban periphery
Author: Paula Meth
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2024-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526171201

The edges of cities are increasingly understood as places of dynamism and change, but there is little research on African urban peripheries, the nature of building, growth, investment and decline that is shaping them and how these are lived. This co-authored monograph draws on findings from an extensive comparative study on Ethiopia and South Africa, in conversation with a related study on Ghana. It examines African urban peripheries through a dual focus on the experiences of living in these changing contexts, alongside the logics driving their transformation. Through its conceptualisation and application of five ‘logics of periphery’, it offers unique, contextually-informed insights into the generic processes shaping urban peripheries, and the variable ways in which these are playing out in contemporary Africa for those living the peripheries.

British Literature in Transition, 1980–2000

British Literature in Transition, 1980–2000
Author: Eileen Pollard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 763
Release: 2018-12-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108577571

The literature of twentieth-century Britain's final twenty years represents a crash course in transitional history. In the aftermath of the 1970s, the nation's hopes of becoming more efficient were high, leading to the fundamental domestic shake-up that was Margaret Thatcher's neoliberal revolution (1979–90). Following the end of the Cold War, Europe was undergoing radical rejuvenation, while the world as a whole began to thrive on new levels of connectivity and proximity brought through rapid advances in communication technology. Later, in the 1990s, Britons were asked to countenance not only internal devolution, but also the crystallisation of a brand-new European and global order. This volume shows how British literature recorded contemporaneous historical change. It traces the emergence and evolution of literary trends as well as enduring transitional shifts in genre, tone, style and thematic preoccupation.