ABSTRACT
The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History explores a variety of geographical and cultural contexts to examine what literary texts, grasped as material objects and reflections on urban materialities, have to offer for urban history.
The contributing writers’ approach to literary narratives and materialities in urban history is summarised within the conceptualisation ‘materiality in/of literature’: the way in which literary narratives at once refer to the material world and actively partake in the material construction of the world. This book takes a geographically multipolar and multidisciplinary approach to discuss cities in the UK, the US, India, South Africa, Finland, and France whilst examining a wide range of textual genres from the novel to cartoons, advertising copy, architecture and urban planning, and archaeological writing. In the process, attention is drawn to narrative complexities embedded within literary fiction and to the dialogue between narratives and historical change.
The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History has three areas of focus: literary fiction as form of urban materiality, literary narratives as social investigations of the material city, and the narrating of silenced material lives as witnessed in various narrative sources.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|96 pages
Literary Fiction as Urban Materiality
chapter 6|20 pages
‘Quite an aristocratic place, although in Whitechapel’
part II|88 pages
Literary Narratives as Social Investigations of the Material City
chapter 7|27 pages
‘The Casey Court House Builders’
chapter 8|18 pages
‘On the Square’
chapter 9|19 pages
‘Would you Adam-and-Eve-it?’
chapter 10|23 pages
The Literary Adventure of the Skyscraper in France (1893–1930)
part III|60 pages
Narrating Silenced Material Lives