1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910476773003321

Autore

Gurr Jens Martin <1974->

Titolo

Charting literary urban studies : texts as models of and for the city / / Jens Martin Gurr

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Taylor & Francis, 2021

New York : , : Routledge, , 2020

©2021

ISBN

1-00-311100-9

1-003-11100-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (224 page) : illustrations

Disciplina

307.76

Soggetti

Cities and towns - Social aspects

Urbanization in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Sommario/riassunto

Guided 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.