The City And the Senses: Urban Culture Since 1500 (Historical Urban Studies) (Historical Urban Studies)

How do we experience a city in terms of the senses? What are the inter-relations between human experience and behaviour in urban space? This volume examines these questions in the context of European urban culture between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring the institutions and ideologies relating to the range of sensual experience and its interpretation. Spanning pre-industrial and modern cities in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, it enables the reader to establish major contrasts and continuities in what is still an evolving urban experience. Divided into sections corresponding to the five senses: noise, vision, taste, touch and smell, each sections allows for comparisons which act as reminders that the experience of the city was a multi-sensual one, and that these experiences were as much intellectual as physical in their nature. These Essays, For The Most Part, Focus On The History Of Particular Sensations, But Together They Point To The Importance Of Situating Them In The Context Of A Wider Understanding Of The Relationship Between The Human Body As Sensorium And Its Urban Environment. Introduction / Jill Steward And Alexander Cowan -- Stench In Sixteenth-century Venice / Jo Wheeler -- 'not Carrying Out The Vile And Mechanical Arts' : Touch As A Measure Of Social Distinction In Early Modern Venice / Alexander Cowan -- Speaking And Listening In Early Modern London / Laura Wright -- Engineering Vision In Early Modern Paris / Ulf Strohmayer -- Touching London : Contact, Sensibility, And The City / Ava Arndt -- Sewers And Sensibilities : The Bourgeois Faecal Experience In The Nineteenth-century City / David Inglis -- 'we Demand Good And Healthy Beer' : The Nutritional And Social Significance Of Beer For The Lower Classes In Mid-nineteenth-century Munich / Kim Carpenter -- Boulevard Culture And Advertising As Spectacle In Nineteenth-century Paris / Hazel Hahn -- A Taste Of Vienna : Food As A Signifier Of Urban Modernity In Vienna, 1890-1930 / Janet Stewart -- Seeing Imperial Berlin : Lesser Ury, The Painter As Stranger / Dorothy Rowe -- Street Noises : Celebrating The Liberation Of Paris In Music And Dance / Rosemary Wakeman. Edited By Alexander Cowan And Jill Steward. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contents List of Figures and Tables Contributors Acknowledgments General Editors’ Preface Introduction Part One: An Environment of All the Senses 1 Stench in sixteenth-century Venice 2 ‘Not carrying out the vile and mechanical arts’: touch as a measure of social distinction in early modern Venice 3 Speaking and listening in early modern London 4 Engineering vision in early modern Paris Part Two: The Culture of Consumption 5 Touching London: contact, sensibility and the city 6 Sewers and sensibilities: the bourgeois faecal experience in the nineteenth-century city 7 ‘We demand good and healthy beer’: the nutritional and social significance of beer for the lower classes in mid-nineteenth-century Munich 8 Boulevard culture and advertising as spectacle in nineteenth-century Paris Part Three: Cultural Control and Cultural Subversion 9 A taste of Vienna: food as a signifier of urban modernity in Vienna, 1890–1930 10 Seeing Imperial Berlin: Lesser Ury, the painter as stranger 11 Street noises: celebrating the Liberation of Paris in music and dance Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z