Paris on the Edge: Literature, City Planning and the Emergence of the Modern Suburb, 1918-1940
FAIN: FT-51690-03
Derek Schilling
Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8559)
How does literary discourse participate in the creation of collective perceptions of lived space? This project delves into the literary imaginary of interwar Paris (1918-1940) to examine the genesis of modern discourses on the suburb in France as a site of marginalization, poverty, and segregation, but also as a realm of simple pleasures and semi-rural life. I will argue that around 1930, literary interest in the urban fringe in the works of CĂ©line, Cendras, Queneau and others corresponded not only to the ideological value of the suburbs as the habitat of the working classes. but also to a growing collective consciousnes of the changing physical limits of the capital, fueled by the discourse of rational city planning.