In this book, Catharina Löffler traces the psycho-physical experiences of London walkers in eighteenth-century literature. For this purpose, readings of fascinating, exciting, comical and sometimes disturbing texts grant insights into a culturally, historically and socially significant time in the history of London and make this book a tour of London as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of fictional eighteenth-century urban walkers. Uniting concepts of literary theory, urban studies and psychogeography, Löffler approaches a cross-generic range of literary texts that design uniquely subjective visions and versions of the city. A journey through the fictions and factions of eighteenth-century London, this book provides a compelling read for anyone interested in the history and literature of the English capital.

William Wordsworth
Grub Street Literature
Urban Imaginary
England
Mobility
imagined cities
Urban Imaginary
modernisation of London
Flâneur
British and Irish Literature

• Front Matter
• Introduction
• Conceptualising and Historicising Psychogeography
  Front Matter
• Experiencing the City: Urban Space in Literature
• Bodies and Spaces: Eighteenth-Century Literary Psychogeography and the London Walker
• London Imaginaries: Walking Experiences in a Changing City
  Front Matter
• The Art of Walking
• “A History of Darkness, Pain, and Fear”: Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year(1722)
• Grub Street and London Low Life
• Women Walkers and Female Experiences of the City
• Romantic Visions of the City: William Wordsworth’s “Residence in London” (1805)
• Conclusion: How Does the World Enter the Text?
• Back Matter

Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen , Giessen, Germany
Catharina Löffler

Book Title
Walking in the City

Book Subtitle
Urban Experience and Literary Psychogeography in Eighteenth-Century London

Authors
Catharina Löffler

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-17743-0

Softcover ISBN
978-3-658-17742-3
Published: 06 April 2017

eBook ISBN
978-3-658-17743-0
Published: 30 March 2017

Edition Number
1

Number of Pages
XIV, 357

Topics
British and Irish Literature, Eighteenth-Century Literature