Description |
x, 244 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
Contents |
Introduction: Reading Cities -- 1. Partitioned Cities: Spatial and Temporal Walls. Isaac Bashevis Singer's Warsaw, The Family Moskat. Amos Oz's Jerusalem, My Michael -- 2. Divided Cities: Social Walls. Theodore Dreiser's Chicago and New York, Sister Carrie. Ralph Ellison's New York, Invisible Man -- 3. Translated Cities: Domesticating the Foreign. Henry James's Paris, The Ambassadors. Henry Roth's New York, Call it Sleep -- 4. Estranged Cities: Defamiliarizing Home. James Joyce's Dublin, Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Virginia Woolt's London, Mrs. Dalloway -- Epilogue: Metropolitan Musings |
Summary |
City Codes is a study of the representation of the city in the modern novel that takes difference as its point of departure, so that cities are read according to the cultural and social position of the urbanite City Codes argues that the modern urban novel, in contrast to earlier novels, is characterized by an intersection of public and private space, but that this intersection is mapped differently according to the position of the city dweller in terms of history, politics, nationality, gender, class, and race. City Codes foregrounds setting in the reading and writing of narrative, and specifically maps the modern urban novel as a text in which boundaries dividing private and public space disappear. It moves from boundaries inscribed onto the cityscape to distances experienced by the city dwellers; its "real" and textual cities are Warsaw, Jerusalem, New York, Chicago, Paris, London, and Dublin |
Analysis |
English literature Special subjects Cities |
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English literature Special subjects Cities |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 228-238) and index |
Subject |
Oz, Amos -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 1904-1991 -- Criticism and interpretation.
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American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Cities and towns in literature.
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City and town life in literature.
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English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Literature and society -- English-speaking countries.
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LC no. |
94048821 |
ISBN |
0521473144 (hardback) |
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