The Literary Psychogeography of London

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.

Argues Moore, Ackroyd, and Sinclair present counter-representations of London that unsettle a romanticizing of Englishness Defines psychogeography as a form of urban literature Explores the concepts of city-ness, London-ness, and Englishness

Autorentext
Ann Tso is Instructor of English at Lethbridge College, Canada. Much of her research concerns popular re-imaginings of world cities, particularly theories of worlding and alternate histories. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Neo-Victorian Studies, The Literary London Journal, and Journal of Narrative Theory.

Inhalt
Chapter 1/ Infinite London: the London-ness of London.- Chapter 2/ The Disintegration of London in Alan Moore's Psychogeography.- Chapter 3/ Peter Ackroyd's Sensuous Detective Method in Hawksmoor .- Chapter 4/ Writing Psychogeography, Writing London through a Screen Darkly: White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings .- Chapter 5/ London-ness: a Marriage of the Literary and the Psychogeographical.