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 Céline, 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.