Literary Urban Studies: Otherworlds of Alan Moore, Peter Ackroyd, and Iain Sinclair

Tso, Ann

This Pivot book examines literary elements of urban topography that have animated Alan Moore, Peter Ackroyd, and Iain Sinclair’s respective representations of London-ness. Ann Tso argues these authors write London “psychogeographically” to deconstruct popular visions of London with colonial and neoliberal undertones. Moore’s psychogeography consists of bird’s-eye views that reveal the brute force threatening to unravel Londonscape from within; Ackroyd’s aims to detect London sensuously, since every new awareness recalls an otherworldly London; Sinclair’s conjures up a narrative consciousness made erratic by London’s disunified landscape. Drawing together the dystopian, the phenomenological, and the postcolonial, Tso explores how these texts characterize “London-ness” as estranging.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2020-09-22

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9783030529796

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-52980-2

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 116