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Dreaming New Orleans

Desire, Cemeteries, and Elysian Fields

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2021

Abstract

Having passed the tercentenary of the “Mississippi Bubble” of 1720, the financial fiasco that accompanied the founding of New Orleans, the city continues to risk everything by gambling on the collateral of its dreams. Like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, “The City that Care Forgot” is playing out a mortgage melodrama under constant threat of dispossession, dreading the last stop on an itinerary that begins with Desire, changes at Cemeteries, and dead ends in Elysian Fields.

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Article
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© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press for Tisch School of the Arts/NYU

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