Charting Literary Urban Studies

Abstract

Charting Literary Urban StudiesGuided by the multifaceted relations between city and text, Charting Literary Urban Studies: Texts as Models of and for the City attempts to chart the burgeoning field of literary urban studies by outlining how texts in varying degrees function as both representations of the city and as blueprints for its future development. The study addresses questions such as these: How do literary texts represent urban complexities -and how can they capture the uniqueness of a given city? How do literary texts simulate layers of urban memory -and how can they reinforce or help dissolve path dependencies in urban development? What role can literary studies play in interdisciplinary urban research? Are the blueprints or 'recipes' for urban development that most quickly travel around the globe -such as the 'creative city', the 'green city' or the 'smart city' -really always the ones that best solve a given problem? Or is the global spread of such travelling urban models not least a matter of their narrative packaging? In answering these key questions, this book also advances a literary studies contribution to the general theory of models, tracing a heuristic trajectory from the analysis of literary texts as representations of urban developments to an analysis of literary strategies in planning documents and other pragmatic, non-literary texts.

Climate Pessimism and Human Nature

“…187-90); Marvel (2019), "Shut Up, Franzen"; Samuel (2019), "The Controversy". 10 For cultural modelling as a methodology, see Gurr (2021), Charting Literary Urban Studies.…”

La plume et le plan. L’écrivain, l’urbaniste et la construction d’un discours social de la ville

“…Nonobstant cette posture, l'importance d'aborder les literary urban studies par un prisme multidisciplinaire a été régulièrement rappelée par les travaux qui en sont issus. Le cadre théorique mobilisé pour le présent article complète donc la lecture architecturale et urbaine en s'appuyant notamment sur les travaux de Jens Martin Gurr, l'une des figures de proue des literary urban studies et auteur d'un ouvrage intitulé Charting Literary Urban Studies, publié en 2021 16 . Il affirme que des textes peuvent être des représentations de la ville ou des modèles pour la ville.…”