Book contents
- New York: A Literary History
- New York
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Adaptation and Adjustment
- Part II Innovation and Inspiration
- Part III Identity and Place
- Part IV Tragedy and Hope
- Chapter 15 The Spatial Drama of Hope and Desire in Contemporary New York City Literature
- Chapter 16 New and Old Amsterdam in Twenty-First Century Fiction
- Chapter 17 Beats, Black Culture and Bohemianism in Mid-Twentieth-Century New York City
- Chapter 18 ‘The Sixth Borough’
- Chapter 19 Walking the City
- Chapter 20 Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 15 - The Spatial Drama of Hope and Desire in Contemporary New York City Literature
from Part IV - Tragedy and Hope
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2020
Edited by
Book contents
- New York: A Literary History
- New York
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Adaptation and Adjustment
- Part II Innovation and Inspiration
- Part III Identity and Place
- Part IV Tragedy and Hope
- Chapter 15 The Spatial Drama of Hope and Desire in Contemporary New York City Literature
- Chapter 16 New and Old Amsterdam in Twenty-First Century Fiction
- Chapter 17 Beats, Black Culture and Bohemianism in Mid-Twentieth-Century New York City
- Chapter 18 ‘The Sixth Borough’
- Chapter 19 Walking the City
- Chapter 20 Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines how writers have spatialized and dramatized the psychology of hope and desire that drives so many New Yorkers lives through scenes of arrival. This literary motif stages a recognizable, affectively charged moment in which the individual first confronts the emblem of twentieth-century technological modernity. New York in such instances stands for the Modern City, the solidly material emanation and at the same time figurative torchbearer of a new century. Into this cityscape, ready for mutual love, the individual arrives propelled, like an inexorably moving train, by desire.
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- Information
- New YorkA Literary History, pp. 215 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020