Writing the City (Urban Visions and Literary Modernism)

Writing the City examines and challenges the traditional transatlantic axis of urban modernism, London-Paris-New York, an axis that has often elided the historical importance of other centers that have shaped metropolitan identities and discourses. According to Desmond Harding, James Joyce's internationalist vision of Dublin generates powerful epistemic and cultural tropes that reconceive the idea of the modern city as a moral phenomenon in transcultural and transhistorical terms. Taking up the works of both Joyce and John Dos Passos, Harding investigates the lasting contributions these author's made to transatlantic intellectual thought in their efforts to envisage the city.