ABSTRACT
The Introduction provides the rationale for the book, which is to tell the history of the city square in its interplay with literary reflections of these squares. The city square is a phenomenon with a multi-faceted interplay between its material or physical structure and its representation in language and literature. It receives a name; it becomes a site for verbal exchanges; it is a scene for rhetorical performances, and it serves as a topos within these performances; it becomes a stage for drama; it often serves as the spatial frame of novels, and novels and poems make comments on specific squares. When writing about cities, one often ends up writing about literature; when writing about literature, one just as often ends up writing about cities. The ambition of this book is to give an account of the history and meaning of the urban square at the intersection between the presence of the square as a physical space and the representation of this space in different kinds of literature. Literature will contribute to the analysis and characterization of the squares, while the squares, simultaneously, contribute to our understanding of this literature.
