Cambridge University Press The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

From the myths and legends that fashioned the identities of ancient city-states to the diversity of literary performance in contemporary cities around the world, literature and the city are inseparably entwined. The international team of scholars in this volume offers a comprehensive, accessible survey of the literary city, exploring the myriad cities that authors create and the genres in which cities appear. Early chapters consider the literary legacies of historical and symbolic cities from antiquity to the early modern period. Subsequent chapters consider the importance of literature to the rise of the urban public sphere; the affective experience of city life; the interplay of the urban landscape and memory; the form of the literary city and its responsiveness to social, cultural and technological change; dystopian, nocturnal, pastoral and sublime cities; cities shaped by colonialism and postcolonialism; and the cities of economic, sexual, cultural and linguistic outsiders. Review 'This volume provides a comprehensive examination of the city and its various meanings and contradictions … The book transcends genre, period boundaries and national divisions, making it an important starting point for those interested in any aspect of the city.' Forum for Modern Language Studies Book Description This Companion offers readers an accessible survey of the historical and symbolic relationships between literature and the city. About the Author Kevin R. McNamara is Professor of Literature at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He is the author of Urban Verbs: Arts and Discourses of American Cities (1996) and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles (2010). McNamara has published more than twenty articles primarily on cities and urban culture in such journals as Arizona Quarterly, Canadian Review of American Studies, College Literature, Contemporary Literature, Criticism, Interactions, the Journal of Urban History, and Prospects. His work has also been published in the Encyclopedia of American Studies ('The Idea of the City'), A Concise Companion to American Studies ('Regionalism'), and collections edited in the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Turkey.