This sweeping literary encounter with the Western idea of the city moves from the early novel in England to the apocalyptic cityscapes of Thomas Pynchon. Along the way, Richard Lehan gathers a rich entourage that includes Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Bram Stoker, Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Raymond Chandler. The European city is read against the decline of feudalism and the rise of empire and totalitarianism; the American city against the phenomenon of the wilderness, the frontier, and the rise of the megalopolis and the decentered, discontinuous city that followed.
Throughout this book, Lehan pursues a dialectic of order and disorder, of cities seeking to impose their presence on the surrounding chaos. Rooted in Enlightenment yearnings for reason, his journey goes from east to west, from Europe to America. In the United States, the movement is also westward and terminates in Los Angeles, a kind of land's end of the imagination, in Lehan's words. He charts a narrative continuum full of constructs that "represent" a cycle of hope and despair, of historical optimism and pessimism.
Lehan presents sharply etched portrayals of the correlation between rationalism and capitalism; of the rise of the city, the decline of the landed estate, and the formation of the gothic; and of the emergence of the city and the appearance of other genres such as detective narrative and fantasy literature. He also mines disciplines such as urban studies, architecture, economics, and philosophy, uncovering material that makes his study a lively read not only for those interested in literature, but for anyone intrigued by the meanings and mysteries of urban life.
The City in Literature An Intellectual and Cultural History
About the Book
Reviews
"In a sweeping analysis of western literature from Greek mythology to Thomas Pynchon and from St. Petersburg, Russia to Los Angeles, California, Lehan persuasively argues that transformations in the structure and function of cities influenced the form of the urban novel. He links developments in urban literature with developments of the city, ascribing various narrative methods and trends to historical stages of urbanization."—H-Net
". . . Lehan's lively study makes good on its contention that "urban constructs must be continuously reexamined," because, diverse and artificial though cities may be, "we interpret the past, test our reality, and structure the future" around them."—Georgia Review
Table of Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART I: READING THE CITY
READING THE TEXT
1.
The City and the Text
PART 2: ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACY
2.
From Myth to Mastery
3·
The City and the Estate
PART 3: MODERNISM I URBANISM
4·
City of Limits
5·
The Inward Tum
6.
Urban Fantasies
7·
Joycity
8.
Urban Entropy
9.
Beyond Liberalism
PART 4. AMERICAN RE-PRESENTATIONS
1O.
The City and the Wilderness
11.
The Urban Frontier
12.
Urban Powers
13·
Urban Destiny
14.
The Urban Vortex
15.
Quest West
PART 5. AFTER THE WASTE LAND
16.
From Myth to Mystery
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX