The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature

From the myths and legends that fashioned the identities of ancientcity-states to the diversity of literary performance in contemporarycities around the world literature and the city are inseparablyentwined. The international team of scholars in this volume offers acomprehensive accessible survey of the literary city exploring themyriad cities that authors create and the genres in which cities appear. Early chapters consider the literary legacies of historical andsymbolic cities from antiquity to the early modern period. Subsequentchapters consider the importance of literature to the rise of the urbanpublic sphere; the affective experience of city life; the interplay ofthe urban landscape and memory; the form of the literary city and itsresponsiveness to social cultural and technological change; dystopiannocturnal pastoral and sublime cities; and the cities of colonialismpostcolonialism and economic sexual cultural and linguisticoutsiders.