Urban form : narrative in an age of urbanization
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Urban Form: Narrative in an Age of Urbanization argues that there is a significant category of contemporary narratives that transmute structures and processes from urbanization into literary form, and that placing the particularities of urban life at the center of literary analysis widens and sharpens criticism's scope. The dissertation takes as its starting point the unprecedented global shift from rural to urban life in the 20th and 21st centuries. Writers affected by this shift include Richard Wright, Zadie Smith, Chris Abani, Orhan Pamuk, and Mohsin Hamid, all of whom have published fictional and nonfictional narratives that attempt to mimetically capture the experience and ramifications of changing social, political, and environmental conditions. The dissertation examines each of their narratives in its particular urban context and, in doing so, identifies four "forms" with implications across urban life and urban narrative: wandering, zoning, intermittency, and shelter. Each form elucidates a new or heightened relation between environment, social life, and artistic representation in modern, midcentury, global, and megacities. Analyzing these forms collectively leads to an urban formalism: a mode of literary criticism that is multidisciplinary, attentive to both surface and depth, rooted in contemporary experience, and ultimately able to engage socially by thinking relationally about patterns and social formations that travel across contexts. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on how this social engagement can move from criticism into teaching and action.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Ammah-Tagoe, Aku |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Saldívar, Ramón, 1949- |
| Thesis advisor | Saldívar, Ramón, 1949- |
| Thesis advisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Rasberry, Vaughn |
| Degree committee member | Eshel, Amir |
| Degree committee member | Rasberry, Vaughn |
| Associated with | Stanford University, English Department. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Aku Ammah-Tagoe. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the English Department. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Aku Ammah-Tagoe
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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