Routledge The City and the Senses: Urban Culture Since 1500 (Historical Urban Studies Series)

How do we experience a city in terms of the senses? What are the inter-relations between human experience and behaviour in urban space? This volume examines these questions in the context of European urban culture between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring the institutions and ideologies relating to the range of sensual experience and its interpretation. Spanning pre-industrial and modern cities in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, it enables the reader to establish major contrasts and continuities in what is still an evolving urban experience. Divided into sections corresponding to the five senses: noise, vision, taste, touch and smell, each sections allows for comparisons which act as reminders that the experience of the city was a multi-sensual one, and that these experiences were as much intellectual as physical in their nature. Review 'This book raises many interesting and thought provoking points in relation to the city and a range of senses and its publication is a welcome one. For too long, sight has been the primary sense and the reawakening of other senses is long overdue.' The Dog Rose Trust ’This is an interesting and important book on a hitherto rather neglected subject... The editorial introduction offers both a useful theoretical survey and an overview of trends from the Renaissance onwards... a raft of lively and informative studies follows... the editors, Alex Cowan and Jill Steward, are to be congratulated on producing an excellent pioneering work.’ H-Albion and H-Net Review ’What this book offers the reader is a new appreciation in examining the city, and it sheds light on how the senses could act as a vehicle through which the historical urban context can be explored.’ Urban Geography Research Group ’... The City and the Senses is essential reading for any scholar working on questions relating to the urban.’ Senses & Society About the Author Alexander Cowan is Reader in History and Jill Steward is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History both at Northumbria University, UK.