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(Re-)Mapping London. Visions of the Metropolis in the Contemporary Novel in English

Ed. Vanessa Guignery

 

 

(Re-)Mapping London. Visions of the Metropolis in the Contemporary Novel in English. Ed. Vanessa Guignery. Paris : Éditions Publibook Université, 2008. 252p.

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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 1960’s 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

       

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