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Document Details :

Title: De stadsroman
Subtitle: Van volvet naar lite
Author(s): KEUNEN, Bart , EECKHOUT, Bart , LIEVENS, Jeroen
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 48    Issue: 2   Date: 2006   
Pages: 247-261
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.48.2.2019431

Abstract :
This article starts from the observation that in contemporary literature and contemporary literary theory the (metonymic) link between the city and modernity, which for some time made the ‘city novel’ a very important literary and literary-critical category, has been losing much of its original significance and relevance. It proposes three aspects of (fictional) urbanity that help to situate this evolution, namely the general spreading of the urban condition, the diversification of the socio-geographical landscape and the increasingly artificial and simulated character of the confrontation between the knowing subject and the social world. These hypotheses not only serve an analytical, but also a constructive goal in that they aim to reorient the field of contemporary literary urban studies toward its deeply changed object.

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