Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century: Spaces beyond the Centres (Literary Urban Studies)

This book develops our understanding of the global literary field in the long nineteenth century by discussing nine different places outside the established metropoles. It shows how different economic, geographical and political factors combined to give each place its own distinctive literary culture and symbolic capital. Taking a geocritical approach, the book shows how its different case studies can be seen as ‘literary capitals’ in terms of their role within the wider nation, region or empire. The volume is divided into three parts. Part One discusses Kolkata, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires. Part Two considers ‘semi-peripheral’ European cities: Pest-Buda (Budapest), Helsinki and Dublin. Part Three focuses on cities within Italy: Trieste, Florence and Rome. Drawing on a wide range of literary texts and different genres, the book reads the nineteenth-century literary field as a constellation where different connections can be plotted across various points on the map at different times. Preface and Acknowledgements Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction: Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century—Spaces beyond the Centres II Works Cited Part I: Beyond Europe Chapter 2: Producing the Colonial Capital: Calcutta in Handbooks Calcutta Handbooks: Background and Purpose Heritage and Historiography as Governmental Policy Intertextuality and Calcutta Handbooks Nostalgia, City Space and Power: The Form and Layout of Calcutta Handbooks Conclusion: Heritage and the Politics of Nostalgia Works Cited Chapter 3: World-Weaving in Nineteenth-Century East Asia: The Case of Hong Kong’s Earliest Chinese Newspaper, Gems from Near and Afar (Chinese Serial) Cultural Capital and the Form(at) of Gems from Near and Afar Extracting the Colonial Particularity of Hong Kong Conclusion Works Cited Chapter 4: Turn-of-the-Century Buenos Aires: A Capital of Queer Spectacles A Queer Invasion Feathers in the Boulevards: The Streets as Drag Space A Spectacular Containment Works Cited Part II: Redefining Peripheries Chapter 5: Bilingual Authors, Multilingual Printing Presses and ‘Informal Capital’: Pest-Buda in the Early Nineteenth Century The City and Its Inhabitants: Pest-Buda in the Early Nineteenth Century Printing for the Empire: The Buda University Press Acts of Staging Literary Sociability and the Press The Literary Mediator: Mihály Vitkovics Conclusion Works Cited Chapter 6: Helsinki or Helsingfors? Jean Sibelius and the Stage City and Nation City and Language Sibelius and the Theatre Works Cited Chapter 7: ‘A Place in Hungary’: The Phantasmal Dublin of Ulysses Works Cited Part III: Polycentric Italy Chapter 8: Trieste’s ‘Adventurers of Culture and Life’ Francesco Dall’Ongaro and Pacifico Valussi’s La Favilla Italo Svevo’s Una Vita Luigi Di San Giusto’s Schemagn Israel Works Cited Chapter 9: Untimely, Modern City: Literary Interventions on Florence as an Intellectual Capital at the Turn of the Century Florence’s Untimely Modernity Mabel Dodge’s Deadly Re-Enactment of the Renaissance Modern But/Because International Cafés and Trams: The Futurists’ Modern(ist) Florence Interruption, Circularity, Repetition: Mina Loy’s Florentine Temporalities Works Cited Chapter 10: From World Capital to National Capital: Literary Periodicals and the Construction of Modern Rome Making a Capital Fanfulla della Domenica: Networking the New Capital Cronaca Bizantina: The Worldly City Il Convito: Aestheticism and Nationalist Myth Conclusion Works Cited Index