Your city does not speak my language: cross-Channel views of Paris and London in the early nineteenth century

Abstract

This paper illustrates the use of descriptions of physical elements of urban space to construct conflicting discourses of national identity in the guides and travel books of Paris and London in the nineteenth century. The metaphors put forward usually imply the existence of different architectural languages, foreign to observers of the other country, and closely linked to a country's moral and political values. Capitals, the use of their space, and their division into private and public, are thus foremost in cross-Channel rivalry.