Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology of Political, Literary, and Cultural Events
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Critical Approaches
- Part II Spotlight Literary Cities
- Chapter 5 The Neighborhood and the Sweatshop
- Chapter 6 “The Whole World in Little”
- Chapter 7 Unworlding Paris
- Chapter 8 Sketching the City with Words
- Chapter 9 Romance and Liminal Space in the Twentieth-Century Cairo Novel
- Chapter 10 Bombay/Mumbai and its Multilingual Literary Pathways to the World
- Chapter 11 At Home in the World
- Chapter 12 Imagining the Migrant in Twenty-First Century Johannesburg
- Chapter 13 Russia
- Chapter 14 “Cityful Passing Away”
- Chapter 15 From Altepetl to Megacity
- Chapter 16 (In)Visible Beijing Within and Without World Literature
- Chapter 17 Worlding Lagos in the Long Twentieth Century
- Chapter 18 Haunted Vitality
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Chapter 6 - “The Whole World in Little”
London as the Capital of World Literature
from Part II - Spotlight Literary Cities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2023
- The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology of Political, Literary, and Cultural Events
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Critical Approaches
- Part II Spotlight Literary Cities
- Chapter 5 The Neighborhood and the Sweatshop
- Chapter 6 “The Whole World in Little”
- Chapter 7 Unworlding Paris
- Chapter 8 Sketching the City with Words
- Chapter 9 Romance and Liminal Space in the Twentieth-Century Cairo Novel
- Chapter 10 Bombay/Mumbai and its Multilingual Literary Pathways to the World
- Chapter 11 At Home in the World
- Chapter 12 Imagining the Migrant in Twenty-First Century Johannesburg
- Chapter 13 Russia
- Chapter 14 “Cityful Passing Away”
- Chapter 15 From Altepetl to Megacity
- Chapter 16 (In)Visible Beijing Within and Without World Literature
- Chapter 17 Worlding Lagos in the Long Twentieth Century
- Chapter 18 Haunted Vitality
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
From Chaucer to Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf to Bernadine Evaristo, London as a city has always instigated the literary imagination. By the nineteenth century, it had become not just the capital of the United Kingdom, but also of a sprawling world-wide empire. This also meant that the city became host to a diverse range of stories, storytellers, and writers that have responded to both its physical and imagined dimensions. Taking a cue from Pascale Casanova’sThe World Republic of Letters, but correcting it to account for the impact of empire, this essay tracks the ways in which London emerged as the global centre of literary and aesthetic production and as a universal arbiter of taste in the early decades of the twentieth century, through the decades of decolonization in the middle of the twentieth century, and leading up to the contemporary moment in which its status as a literary capital is subject to new uncertainties that are enmeshed in the political economy of contemporary world literature.The essay focalizes this discussion through two linked tropes—the city’s “exhibitionary complex” and its “circulatory network”.
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- The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature , pp. 83 - 97Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023