Introduction — Fictions of the City

Abstract

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the exponential growth of both London and Paris created unprecedented social formations. The attempt to make sense of the complexity of modern urban life — or alternatively to testify to its incomprehensibility — became a key function of fictional narrative. To make an urban fiction is to make assumptions about the nature of the city in question and the ways in which it functions. Often, it will also involve a critical engagement with the structures, institutions and mechanisms that shape the city’s social life. Fictions of the city thus frequently contain projections about the ways in which that city could be improved or perfected, or go to wrack. In this regard novels and films about urban life form a continuum with treatises on urban planning, architectural manifestoes and social reform tracts. The relationship between the real city and the novels and films that use that city as a setting is complex and heavily mediated by other cultural forms. This book investigates representations of urban life that are embedded in a discourse about the interrelation of class, culture and mass housing in the modern metropolis, taking London and Paris as its test cases.KeywordsSocial HousingHousing TypeUrban LifeMass HousingCritical EngagementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.