On the Margin of Cities. Representation of Urban Space in Contemporary Irish and British Fiction Philippe Laplace, Eric Tabuteau
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Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities. Representation of Urban Space in Contemporary Irish and British Fiction Philippe Laplace, Eric Tabuteau To cite this version: Philippe Laplace, Eric Tabuteau. Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities. Representation of Urban Space in Contemporary Irish and British Fiction. 2003. hal-02320291 HAL Id: hal-02320291 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02320291 Submitted on 14 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Gérard BREY (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon), Foreword ..... 9 Philippe LAPLACE & Eric TABUTEAU (University of Franche- Comté, Besançon), Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities ......... 11 Richard SKEATES (Open University), "Those vast new wildernesses of glass and brick:" Representing the Contemporary Urban Condition ......... 25 Peter MILES (University of Wales, Lampeter), Road Rage: Urban Trajectories and the Working Class ............................................................ 43 Tim WOODS (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Re-Enchanting the City: Sites and Non-Sites in Urban Fiction ................................................ 63 Eric TABUTEAU (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon), Marginally Correct: Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners ..................................................................................... 81 Corinne DUBOIN (University of Réunion), Searching for the Centre: African-Caribbean Women's Experience of London in Joan Riley's Romance ..................................................................................................... 97 Ana María SANCHEZ-ARCE (University of Hull), Invisible Cities: Being and Creativity in Meera Syal's Anita and Me and Ben Okri's Astonishing the Gods ............................................................................. 113 Marianne CAMUS (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon), York in Behind the Scenes at the Museum: A City in-between ......................... 131 Sara MARINELLI (Istituto Universitario Orientale, Napoli), "Under a beautiful light." Marginality, Regeneration, Relocation: Women's Voices within the Glasgow Narrative .................................................................. 145 Philippe LAPLACE (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon), Bodies of Evidence: Cities and Stories in Robert McLiam Wilson's Eureka Street and Irvine Welsh's Filth ............................................................................ 163 8 Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities Shane MURPHY (University of Aberdeen), The city is a Map of the City: Representations of Belfast's Narrow Ground .................................. 183 Joseph BROOKER (Birkbeck College, University of London), Larrygogan in Space: The Barrytown Trilogy ........................................ 201 Ruth HELYER (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne), "It was a madhouse of assorted bric-à-brac:" Urban Intensification in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting ............................................................................................ 217 Notes on Contributors ............................................................................... 235 Index ........................................................................................................... 237 Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities 9 Avant-propos L’ouvrage que le lecteur a entre les mains est dû à l’initiative de deux universitaires franc-comtois (Philippe Laplace et Eric Tabuteau), qui ont voulu réunir les approches d’universitaires européens autour de la géographie littéraire de la ville dans le roman contemporain britannique. Cette confrontation à distance a été conçue dans le cadre des travaux de l’unité de recherche interdisciplinaire "Littérature et Histoire des pays de langues européennes (EA3224)", qui a toujours entretenu une collaboration étroite avec des collègues d’autres pays. L’ouvrage regroupe douze contributions qui abordent la façon dont certains romanciers de langue anglaise de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle témoignent des évolutions sociales récentes de la ville et de la façon dont celle-ci est vécue et rêvée par ses habitants de toujours ou par ceux qui viennent y trouver ce que ne leur a pas donné leur pays d’origine. Dus à des écrivains dont certains n’ont jusqu’ici que peu nourri la critique, ces récits de fiction ont pour cadre des métropoles bien réelles telles que Londres, Glasgow, Edimbourg, Belfast, Dublin, ou encore York. Les romanciers y témoignent des répercussions que peuvent avoir, sur leur vie concrète et leur imaginaire ou ceux de leurs contemporains faits personnages, les transformations spatiales et sociologiques en cours, les discriminations dont ils peuvent être victimes. Ils reflètent et confrontent les images passées et présentes de la ville ou de leur quartier. Notre équipe a vocation à analyser les regards que la littérature porte sur l’histoire et à rendre compte de la façon dont la fiction peut témoigner de la perception du monde par les générations successives. C’est pourquoi, j’ai encouragé d’emblée le projet de Ph. Laplace et d’E. Tabuteau, à la fois pour sa cohérence et son originalité, en même temps que pour la variété des perspectives adoptées. Puissent ceux qui s’intéressent à la littérature britannique actuelle, et à la littérature tout court, y trouver matière à mieux la savourer. Gérard Brey Directeur de l’EA3224 Littérature et Histoire des pays de langues européennes Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities, 2003, 11-23 Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities Philippe LAPLACE & Eric TABUTEAU (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon) When twelve researchers who specialize in various fields of British and Irish literature decide to contribute to a collective work dealing with the representation of urban space in contemporary British and Irish fiction, it cannot be reasonably expected that they will reach the same conclusions; first because the works they survey are bound to be extremely different; second because the theoretical background they use to analyse the selected novels is voluminous. Yet, the editors have decided to divide this collection of essays into two sections. In doing so, they want to prove that although various themes are developed in the twelve chapters, common strains are to be found. Above all, the multiplicity of voices and of opinions reflected here by all the contributors stresses the energy and the spirit of the "margin." The title of course implies the geographical periphery, but it also stands for people whose voices have for so long been dismissed in traditional urban discourse, those who have been left on the "margin of cities." This book is by no means a definitive account of contemporary novels in Great Britain and Ireland, but it aims at providing a starting point for debates and reflections on the unsettled postmodern cityscape and on the anxious and sometimes thunderous voices heard from the margin. 12 Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities A Tale of "post- Cities" The first part of this collective work brings us to England's metropolises. Although some outer or distant cities like Dublin, New York or Kingston are alluded to, it is the major English cities that are the main centres of interest. The authors lay the emphasis on the literary representations of London, but also Sheffield, Birmingham, York and their outskirts. Yet, if the contributors have chosen narratives which present typical English conurbations, it does not imply that the novels under scrutiny propose a hackneyed picture of the cityscape. It would undoubtedly be possible and relevant to focus on classic descriptions of English cities, on works which consider them from a traditional angle. Even at the dawn of the third millenium, modernist visions of the city cannot be dismissed as inapt and outdated. After all, as Peter Hall has remarked in Cities of Tomorrow, "in the mid-1980s the problem of the urban underclass was still as stubbornly rooted in the world's cities, and in the consciousness of its more sensitive citizens, as in the mid-1880s, when it provided the vital stimulus to the birth of modern city planning."1 But the authors of this collection of essays are convinced that today cities are undergoing major and rapid changes which make it impossible to study them as before. They agree with Saskia Sassen for whom "Economic globalization, accompanied by the emergence of a global culture, has profoundly altered the social, economic, and political reality of nation-states, cross national regions, and […] cities."2 They see the city as a changeable, disparate whole with endlessly variable borders, and they are aware that contemporary literature endeavours to give an account of this phenomenon. Thus, although they deal with representations of English cities, the nerve centres of the empire on which the sun never sets, the authors of this first part essentially focus on novels which stress a postmodern or post-colonial perspective, because they are