Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the urban space in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Tow Cities and Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat”. The two works contain the appearance of carnival landscapes occurring in the background of uniform and homogenized modern cities. This paper analyzes the meaning of space in the two works as the concept of heterotopia and the social relationship that occurs in the historical environment of the city as René Girard’s human desire and scapegoat mechanism. This paper suggest the urban space in the works can be interpreted as a social space such as the modernity maze related to the modernization of the subject or the growth of the modern self beyond the function of the physical space which is the background of the occurrence of events. Consequently, I suggest that the two works show the possibility of creating a heterotopia, a small crevice in the urban space filled with order and taboos imposed by mainstream culture.

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