(Re-)Mapping London. Visions of the Metropolis
in the Contemporary Novel in English. Ed. Vanessa Guignery. Paris
: Éditions Publibook Université, 2008. 252p.
Commande sur internet au prix de 30 euros: http://www.publibook.com/
The aim of this collection is to explore representations of London
in contemporary literature from two main perspectives: the city as
observed by British-born Londoners and the new multicultural London.
The British capital is sometimes presented as a labyrinthine, hostile
and even occult city which is now no longer the centre of the Empire
and is a place of chaos, decay, disorder, corruption and alienation.
But it can also be considered in a creative and dynamic perspective
as the source of endless imagination and regeneration, as the place
for growth and change, for new beginnings and possibilities. This
volume examines fresh ways of re-mapping the metropolis and redefining
its contours in novels from the 1960s to the present, with special
focus on Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Peter
Ackroyd, Will Self, Caryl Phillips, Doris Lessing, Jenny Diski, Tibor
Fischer and Monica Ali.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction : London observed, by Vanessa Guignery (Paris IV Sorbonne,
France)
British Londoners
Madness in the City : Crazy Flâneurs in the writings of Jenny
Diski, Tibor Fischer, and Jane Rogers, by Gerd Bayer (Erlangen, Germany)
Mr Dalloway (Robin Lippincott) and Saturday (Ian McEwan)
: Virginia Woolf's legacy of London, by Monica Girard (Nancy II, France)
A medley of images : (re)presentation of the city in Doris Lessing's
London Observed and V.S. Pritchett's London Perceived,
by Paulina Kupisz (Warsaw, Poland)
Will Self's Dorian : "in the stinky inky heart of tentacular
London", by Marie-Noëlle Zeender (Nice Sophia-Antipolis,
France)
Graham Swift
From Bermondsey to Brick Lane : the variegated Londons of Graham Swift
and Monica Ali, by Catherine Pesso-Miquel (Lyon II, France)
Shop Owning and Memory Honing in Graham Swift's Fictions of South
London : The Sweet Shop Owner; Last Orders and The
Light of Day, by Georges Letissier (Nantes, France)
Revisiting London's monuments : sidelining Graham Swift, Ian McEwan,
Martin Amis, by Claire Larsonneur (Paris VIII, France)
The Light of Day : a day in Graham Swift's London, by Béatrice
Berna (Paris IV Sorbonne, France)
A Conversation with Graham Swift
New Londoners
Urban Palimpsests and (Dis-) Enchanted Flâneurs. Representations
of London in Salman Rushdie's novels, by Daniela Rogobete (Craiova,
Romania)
London at the Millennium: Imaginary Constructions of the City in Zadie
Smith's White Teeth and Diran Adebayo's My Once Upon a Time,
by Dagmar Dreyer (Göttingen, Germany)
"Just keep on walking in a straight line": allowing for
chance in Zadie Smith's overdetermined London (White Teeth,
The Autograph Man and On Beauty), by Laurent Mellet
(Bourgogne, France)
Beyond Postcolonial Culture ? Brit-lit and the inner/outer London
city novels of Courttia Newland, by Anne Fuchs (Nice Sophia-Antipolis,
France)
Longing for landscape : new Londoners' sense of belonging and the
representation of the city, by Flaminia Nicora (Bergamo, Italy)
Foreign Home : Caryl Phillips's The Final Passage, by Josiane
Ranguin (Paris IV Sorbonne, France)
Abstracts