Metropolitan motion : French travel writing in London and New York, 1851-2000

Abstract

My thesis examines the development of an imaginative geography of urban space through the analysis of travel writing. By imaginative geography I refer to the epistemological categorisation through which French culture has established codes for the representation and practice of urban space. In this thesis I elaborate upon the significance of both urbanism and travel as two major cultural events in the formation of Western identities and in the production of possibilities for knowledge in the modern urban landscape. I understand the city as a dialectical space, constantiy engaged in the production of societies' value systems and relational identities. Examining travel writing as a function of how the West (specifically France) has understood its identity and formed discourses for the urban Other, the thesis traces the evolution of these discourses through the spatial practice of travel, the traveller's encounter with the urban sign, and its subsequent representation in the travel journal.