Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture (Environmental Cultures)

From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world's great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. __Cities and Wetlands__ is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment. Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Environmental Cultures Series 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 8 Part 1 Beginnings 10 1 Introduction: Looking Back, Looking Forward 12 2 Aquaterrapolises: Swamp Cities and Marsh Metropolises 24 Part 2 European Cities and Wetlands 42 3 Paris: Or, Lutetia, “The Filthy Marsh” 44 Lutetia 47 Haussmann: Boulevard blaster, modernity bludgeoner 52 Paris, or Lutetia, as woman, as goddess, as Great Mother, and as dialectical image 55 Tours of the sewers 62 4 London: The “Nether World” of “the City of Dreadful Night” 68 Nether world 75 City conditions 78 London on London 80 Slums 86 Crystal Palace 89 5 Venice: “A Tropical Marshland, Steaming, Monstrous, Rank” 92 6 Berlin: “A Dingy City in a Marsh” 106 7 Hamburg: “This Marshy, Watery City” 124 8 St. Petersburg: “Marooned on the Neva’s Marsh Delta” 134 The Bronze Horseman 137 Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg 139 Bely’s Petersburg 145 Part 3 North American Cities and Wetlands 152 9 New York: A City Set in “a Mosquito-​Infested Swamp” 154 10 Boston: “Tidal Flats and Marshes Once Surrounded the City” 172 11 New Orleans: “The Swamp is No Place for a City” 192 12 Toronto: “Set in Malarial Lakeside Swamps” 206 13 Washington: “A Discouraging Site Bordered by a Swamp” 224 14 Chicago: “Built in the Midst of a Great Level Swamp” 234 Sinclair’s Chicago 238 Brecht’s Chicago 242 Olmsted’s Chicago 244 Part 4 More Beginnings 248 15 Conclusion: The City as Body, the Earth as Body, and the Body as Earth 250 Acknowledgments 258 Notes 260 References 264 Index 282 This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world's great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment.Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington. "From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world's great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment. Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington. "--Bloomsbury Publishing. "From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world's great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment. Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington."-- Provided by Publisher From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world's great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment.

Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington. From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world's great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. This is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment. Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington