The modern city emerged from the Industrialization parallel to the advent of Modernism. The first big metropolises—Paris, New York, Chicago, London or Berlin—were the settings for the great realistic and naturalistic novels at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. From the very beginning the city was a plot element influencing the individuals with its strange powers. Writers soon realized that conventional narrative structure had to change to describe life in our modern metropolises.
The seminar concentrates on two novels: Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (English translation: Hopscotch) which takes place in Paris and Buenos Aires and plays with binary structures by even letting the reader jump back and forth in the book imitating a children’s play. And second, Paul Auster’s City of Glass, a post-modern detective novel full of mirror images. Besides these two novels we will take a look at a few shorter texts that focus on the life in the modern metropolis. |
