Pike, Burton, author

The image of the city in modern literature / by Burton Pike.

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1981]

xv, 168 pages ; 23 cm.

Princeton essays in literature

A phrase first used by Hawthorne, "paved solitude", suggests the paradox of modern city life, the isolation of the individual in the midst of community. This theme runs throughout Burton Pike's investigation of the image of the city in modern Western literature. He shows that while the city is a highly developed and complex form of social organization, it came to represent in the nineteenth century the exclusion of the individual from the community, and in the twentieth century, the fragmentation of the very concept of community. The author also discloses the most constant underlying attitude toward the city in Western culture: an unresolved ambivalence, or antithetical feeling of love and hate, hope and fear. Ambivalence, he shows, has been associated witht the city since the beginning of Western civilization. In the nineteenth century, which saw the rise of the industrial city, and with it rapid and dislocating changes, attitudes toward the city tended to emphasize the negative feelings and associations. During the twentieth century, the general presentation of the city in literature changed from that of an essentially static object, fixed in space, to one of a "fragmented and subjective kaleidoscope, constantly shifting in time". He argues that the city as a spatial phenomenon is in conflict with time, another expression of ambivalence.

0691064881
9780691064888

City and town life in literature.
Literature, Modern 19th century History and criticism.
Literature, Modern 20th century History and criticism.
Cities and towns in literature.
Villes dans la littérature.
Littérature 19e siècle Histoire et critique.
Littérature 20e siècle Histoire et critique.
Vie urbaine dans la littérature.
Literature, Modern
Literatur
Stadt
Letterkunde.
Steden.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Princeton essays in literature.

Location: Library main 35296
Call No.: ID:88-B6645
Status: Available