Literary Models of Urban Complexity and the Problem of Simultaneity

“Literary Models of Urban Complexity and the Problem of Simultaneity: A Sketchy Inventory of Strategies” develops a typology of literary strategies in the representation of urban complexity. It takes its cue from the insight – formulated by Georg Simmel, Kevin Lynch and others – that an overwhelming simultaneity is quintessential to the urban experience. Arguing that, given the linearity of print, the representation of this simultaneity poses the main challenge to literary models of the city, and that the representation of urban simultaneity invariably involves or at least implies most other key facets of complexity, use a wide range of texts from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century is used to to develop a typology of literary strategies of nonetheless representing, simulating or suggesting this simultaneity. It is precisely the use of such strategies, this chapter argues, which enables literary texts to function as models of urban complexity.