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This book demonstrates how city literature addresses questions of
possibility. In city literature, ideas of possibility emerge
primarily through two perspectives: texts may focus on what is
possible for cities, and they may present the urban environment as
a site of possibility for individuals or communities. The volume
combines reflections on urban possibility from a range of
geographical and cultural contexts-in addition to the
English-speaking world, individual chapters analyse possible cities
and possible urban lives in Turkey, Israel, Finland, Germany,
Russia and Sweden. Moreover, by engaging with issues such as city
planning, mass housing, gentrification, informal settlements and
translocal identities, the book shows imaginative literature at
work outlining what possibility means in cities.
This book demonstrates how city literature addresses questions of
possibility. In city literature, ideas of possibility emerge
primarily through two perspectives: texts may focus on what is
possible for cities, and they may present the urban environment as
a site of possibility for individuals or communities. The volume
combines reflections on urban possibility from a range of
geographical and cultural contexts-in addition to the
English-speaking world, individual chapters analyse possible cities
and possible urban lives in Turkey, Israel, Finland, Germany,
Russia and Sweden. Moreover, by engaging with issues such as city
planning, mass housing, gentrification, informal settlements and
translocal identities, the book shows imaginative literature at
work outlining what possibility means in cities.
This book brings together geographers and literary scholars in a
series of engagements near the boundaries of their disciplines. In
urban studies, disproportionate attention has been given to a small
set of privileged 'first' cities. This volume problematizes the
dominance of such alpha cities, offering a wide perspective on
'second cities' and their literature. The volume is divided into
three themed sections. 'In the Shadow of the Alpha City'
problematizes the image of cities defined by their function and
size, bringing out the contradictions and contestations inherent in
cultural productions of second cities, including Birmingham and
Bristol in the UK, Las Vegas in the USA, and Tartu in Estonia.
'Frontier Second Cities' pays attention to the multiple and
trans-national pasts of second cities which occupy border zones,
with a focus on Narva, in Estonia, and Turkish/Kurdish Diyarbakir.
The final section, 'The Diffuse Second City', examines networks the
diffuse secondary city made up of interlinked small cities,
suburban sprawl and urban overspill, with literary case studies
from Italy, Sweden, and Finland.
Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature
demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from
suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed
cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban
peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and
numerous cities.
Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature
demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from
suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed
cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban
peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and
numerous cities.
This book brings together geographers and literary scholars in a
series of engagements near the boundaries of their disciplines. In
urban studies, disproportionate attention has been given to a small
set of privileged 'first' cities. This volume problematizes the
dominance of such alpha cities, offering a wide perspective on
'second cities' and their literature. The volume is divided into
three themed sections. 'In the Shadow of the Alpha City'
problematizes the image of cities defined by their function and
size, bringing out the contradictions and contestations inherent in
cultural productions of second cities, including Birmingham and
Bristol in the UK, Las Vegas in the USA, and Tartu in Estonia.
'Frontier Second Cities' pays attention to the multiple and
trans-national pasts of second cities which occupy border zones,
with a focus on Narva, in Estonia, and Turkish/Kurdish Diyarbakir.
The final section, 'The Diffuse Second City', examines networks the
diffuse secondary city made up of interlinked small cities,
suburban sprawl and urban overspill, with literary case studies
from Italy, Sweden, and Finland.
The grotesque has provided both laymen and scholars with extreme
delights for centuries: from the ornamental combining of rare
motifs in antiquity to a hybridisation of structural genres in
recent times; from fantastical fusions of humans and beasts to
comic exaggerations of bodily aberrations and prosthetic postmodern
visions. Eluding clear classification at all times, the notion has
often been identified with ideas of contradiction and conflation
and observed in relation to principles and categories such as
estrangement (Wolfgang Kayser) and carnival (Mikhail Bakhtin), the
sublime (Victor Hugo) and Victorian Gothic imagination (John
Ruskin). In this context, the present volume appears as a synthesis
and radical questioning of existing historical developments. The
book contributes to current discussions on the grotesque in
contemporary literary and cultural theory from the perspective of
one specific motif: the unnatural. Quite like the grotesque,
observing the unnatural (and unnaturalness) reveals a resilient
strain in critical thought, and the significance of this history
gradually unfolds as the volume charts the progress of its main
themes from the Renaissance to the present day. While in much
current talk about theory and criticism certain related notions are
still posited for and against each other--what is seen as normal or
natural and what is not, and what should be seen as normal or
natural and what should not--the discussions in The Grotesque and
the Unnatural go a long way toward founding a new vista from which
to observe this beguiling opposition. The book presents a new
perspective on the grotesque by considering it as a phenomenon
which comes into being only through a negation of sorts, yet
refusing to place it in a simple, normative pattern as nature's
antithesis or expressive gesture. As the articles demonstrate, the
grotesque is always in the process of subverting or surpassing
something, always not being ideal or sufficient to either nature or
a social rule, and this very negation affects its status as a tool
of transformation or emancipation from norm: the grotesque figure
does not represent any particular stage of development or natural
state of being. As such, the grotesque hints at and hinges on
something that exceeds habitual spheres of culture and
communication but, as the book aims to show, this elusiveness of
meaning gives no cause for analytic despair. By tracing the
involutions of the grotesque with the unnatural in specific
literary cases, the book evokes centuries of Western cultural
history and ultimately focuses on two questions: How and why does
the grotesque tend to negate nature, and how does it affect our
understanding of what we see? The diverse materials and historical
scope of The Grotesque and the Unnatural make the book, in its
exceptional thematic unity, a valuable addition to the fields of
literary and cultural studies.
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