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E-book
Author Pike, David L. (David Lawrence), 1963-

Title Metropolis on the Styx : the underworlds of modern urban culture, 1800-2001 / David L. Pike
Published Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2007

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Description 1 online resource (xvii, 377 pages) : illustrations, maps
Contents 1. Devil, the Underground, and the Vertical City -- Underground Metropolis -- Modernist Space and Underground Theory -- From the Mine to the Trench -- Devil above and the Devil below -- Devil and the Rhythms of Modern Life -- Seasons in Twentieth-Century Hell -- Modernism, Memory, and Urban Space -- 2. Devil Comes to Town -- Devil in Paris and London -- Devil in Urban Hell -- Spectacles of the Metropolitan Devil -- His Satanic Majesty's Court -- Devil on Crutches -- Satanic Verses -- Devil Take the Hindmost -- Modern Devil -- 3. Mysteries of the Underground -- True Mysteries of the Modern Metropolis Revealed -- Sensations of Subterranean London -- "If the rich only knew ..." -- Afterlife of the Urban Mysteries -- Urban Underworlds of Postwar America -- 4. Through the Looking Glass -- Er Ego in Arcadia -- Down by the Dark Arches -- Passage under the Thames -- Foreign Incursions -- Arcade Entrenched -- Thresholds of Stage and Screen -- Threshold of a New Millennium
Summary In Metropolis on the Styx, David L. Pike considers how underground spaces and their many myths have organized ways of seeing, thinking about, and living in the modern city. Expanding on the cultural history of underground construction in his acclaimed previous book, Subterranean Cities, Pike details the emergence of a vertical city in the imagination of nineteenth-century Paris and London, a city overseen by hosts of devils and undermined by subterranean villains, a city whose ground level was replete with passages between above and below. Metropolis on the Styx brings together a rich variety of visual and written sources ranging from pulp mysteries and movie serials to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and the novels of Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Elinor Glyn to the broadsheets and ephemera of everyday urban life. From these materials, Pike conjures a working theory of modern underground space that explains why our notions about urban environments remain essentially nineteenth-century in character, even though cities themselves have since changed almost beyond recognition. Highly original in subject matter, methodology, and conclusions, Metropolis on the Styx synthesizes a number of critical approaches, periods of study, and disciplines in the analysis of a single category of space-the underground. Pike studies the built environments and the textual and visual ephemera (including little-known or unknown archival material) of Paris, London, and other cities in conjunction with canonical modern literature and art. This book integrates a rich visual component-photographs, movie stills, prints, engravings, paintings, cartoons, maps, and drawings of actual and imagined subterranean spaces-into the fabric of the argument
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-356) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Underground areas -- Social aspects
Underground areas in literature.
Civilization, Subterranean.
Sociology, Urban.
urban sociology.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Sociology -- Urban.
Civilization, Subterranean
Sociology, Urban
Underground areas in literature
Unterirdisches Bauwerk
Kunst
Literatur
Unterwelt Motiv
Ondergrondse bouwwerken.
Stadscultuur.
Duivel.
Untergrund <Kultur, Motiv>
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2007018953
ISBN 9781501729461
1501729462