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London Literarisch London literarisch: Stadtentwürfe im zeitgenössischen englischen Roman, 1990-2000 Dissertation zur Erlangung des philosophischen Doktorgrades an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen vorgelegt von Dagmar Dreyer aus Hamburg INHALTSVERZEICHNIS 1 EINLEITUNG 1 1.1 London in der Literatur 1 1.2 Londonliteratur in der jüngeren Forschung 6 1.3 London im postmodernen und postkolonialen Diskurs 8 1.3.1 Lesbarkeit und Zeichenhaftigkeit der Stadt 11 1.3.2 Black British Writing 15 1.4 Zur Vorgehensweise 19 1.4.1 Romanauswahl 19 1.4.2 Methodik 21 1.4.2.1 Kulturwissenschaftlich erweiterte Motiv- und Themenuntersuchung 21 1.4.2.2 London topographisch und soziokulturell 25 1.4.2.3 London symbolisch 26 2 LONDON IM POSTMODERNEN DISKURS: LESBARKEIT UND ZEICHENHAFTIGKEIT DER STADT 29 2.1 Penelope Lively, City of the Mind (1991) 29 2.1.1 London topographisch und soziokulturell 29 2.1.1.1 Docklands 31 2.1.1.2 Spitalfields 34 2.1.1.3 Greenwich 37 2.1.1.4 Covent Garden 38 2.1.1.5 It's Each for Himself in this World: Auswirkungen des Thatcherism 40 2.1.1.6 Migration als existentieller Zustand 42 2.1.2 London symbolisch 44 2.1.2.1 Die Stadt als Palimpsest 44 2.1.2.2 Wahrnehmung der Stadt 46 2.1.2.3 Lesbarkeit der Stadt 48 2.1.2.4 Londonbilder: Sichtweisen auf die Stadt 51 2.1.2.5 Modernistische und postmoderne Stadtkonstruktion 54 2.2 Geoff Nicholson, Bleeding London (1997) 58 2.2.1 London topographisch und soziokulturell 58 2.2.1.1 Verortung der Figuren: Implizite Charakterisierung durch Raum 58 2.2.1.2 Wege durch London 62 2.2.1.3 Greater London als Romanschauplatz: Strategien der Darstellung 65 2.2.1.4 (Zeit-)Geschichte und intertextuelle Konstruktion der Stadt 69 2.2.2 London symbolisch 70 2.2.2.1 Strategien der Stadterschließung und Stadtaneignung 70 2.2.2.2 Stadt als Körper, Körper als Stadt: Spiel mit einer Metapher 75 2.2.2.3 Inventing a New City: Subjektivität der Stadtwahrnehmung 79 2.2.2.4 Unlesbarkeit der Stadt 82 2.2.2.5 London als Simulakrum 83 2.2.2.6 Bleeding London als postmoderner Londonroman 84 2.3 Zusammenfassung 87 3 LONDON IM POSTKOLONIALEN DISKURS: IDENTITÄTSFINDUNG IM MULTIKULTURELLEN GESELLSCHAFTSGEFÜGE DER STADT 89 3.1 Atima Srivastava, Transmission (1992) 89 3.1.1 London topographisch und soziokulturell 89 3.1.1.1 Finchley 89 3.1.1.2 Stoke Newington und Hackney 91 3.1.1.3 Soho und West End 92 3.1.1.4 Figurenkonstellation als Repräsentation sozialer Heterogenität 94 3.1.2 London symbolisch 99 3.1.2.1 Stoke Newington/Hackney als Experimentierraum 100 3.1.2.2 Learning the Ways of Cool: Angie zwischen Schein und Sein 101 3.1.2.3 Ethnische und nationale Konzepte: Indianness, Englishness, Britishness 104 3.1.2.4 Problematisierung von Identitätsfindung: Hanif Kureishis The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) 107 3.1.2.5 Kureishis postkoloniales London: Redefining Britishness 113 3.1.2.6 Kontext: Black British Bildungsroman 115 3.2 Diran Adebayo, Some Kind of Black (1996) 120 3.2.1 London topographisch und soziokulturell 120 3.2.1.1 Nordostlondon und Nordwestlondon 121 3.2.1.2 Zentrum und Ostlondon 123 3.2.1.3 Brixton und Südlondon 125 3.2.1.4 Schauplätze außerhalb Londons 128 3.2.1.5 Being Black in London: London als Ort schwarzer Identitätskonstruktionen 129 3.2.1.6 Black London und Musik 136 3.2.1.7 Exkurs: Black London in Another Lonely Londoner (1991) 137 3.2.1.8 Understand that you're an African: Konflikte mit der Elterngeneration 140 3.2.2 London symbolisch 142 3.2.2.1 London als Experimentierraum für Deles Identitätsfindung 142 3.2.2.2 Rollenspiele: Oxford - London 143 3.2.2.3 Desorientierung 145 3.2.2.4 Orientierungsversuche 149 3.2.2.5 Subversion der Verortung 151 3.3 Zusammenfassung 156 4 MILLENNIUMSENTWÜRFE 159 4.1 Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000) 159 4.1.1 London topographisch und soziokulturell 159 4.1.1.1 Brent und Willesden 159 4.1.1.2 Kontraste: Nordlondon und Südlondon, East End und Willesden 161 4.1.1.3 Willesden Landmarks und Willesden Kaleidoscope 164 4.1.1.4 London als Repräsentation der postkolonialen Dichotomie 167 4.1.1.5 Elterngeneration: Archie und Clara, Samad und Alsana 169 4.1.1.6 In-Betweeners – die zweite Generation: Millat, Magid und Irie 171 4.1.1.7 Englishness in 'Reinkultur'? Die Chalfens 175 4.1.2 London symbolisch 177 4.1.2.1 Wege zum Zentrum 178 4.1.2.2 Auseinandersetzung mit dem Zentrum 180 4.1.2.3 Theoretische Konzepte: Routes-Roots und Hybridity 181 4.1.2.4 London abstrakt: The Final Space 189 4.2 Diran Adebayo, My Once Upon a Time (2000) 193 4.2.1 London topographisch und soziokulturell 193 4.2.1.1 Südlondon 194 4.2.1.2 Kontrastierung mit anderen Londoner Bereichen 199 4.2.1.3 Natives oder My Kind? Race und Class in London 202 4.2.1.4 'Yuppie' und 'Unschuld vom Lande': Soziokulturelle Typisierungen 206 4.2.2 London symbolisch 209 4.2.2.1 Opposition von Stadt und Land 210 4.2.2.2 Heaven or Hell: London als Hölle 212 4.2.2.3 Boys Quest: Lernen aus der Vergangenheit 213 4.2.2.4 Boys Prüfung: Anklänge an die Romanzentradition 215 4.2.2.5 Allegorie und Dystopie 218 4.3 Zusammenfassung 221 5 SCHLUSSBETRACHTUNG 224 5.1 London topographisch 224 5.2 London soziokulturell 238 5.3 London symbolisch 245 6 BIBLIOGRAPHIE 257 6.1 Primärliteratur 257 6.2 Sekundärliteratur 258 6.3 Internetangaben 276 7 ANHANG: GREATER LONDON BOROUGHS 277 1 1 Einleitung 1.1 London in der Literatur Die Stadt London hat von jeher eine große Faszination auf Schriftsteller und Künstler ausgeübt und ihre Imagination angeregt. Berühmt ist Samuel Johnsons Diktum, das London als Leben schlechterdings preist: "[W]hen a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."1 Vor allem im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert spiegelte sich Londons Bedeutung als größte Stadt Europas und schließlich der Welt, als Handelsmetropole und Zentrum des British Empire in der Literatur wider. Insbesondere das rapide und 'ungeordnete' Wachstum der Stadt2, gerade im Zuge der Industriellen Revolution, stellte eine Herausforderung dar, die einerseits als Vielfalt gefeiert, andererseits als Bedrohung gesehen wurde. Ein schlaglichtartiger Überblick, der keinesfalls Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit erhebt, soll die ausgewählten Londonromane der Dekade 1990-2000, um die es in der vorliegenden Arbeit geht, in einen weiteren literarischen Kontext einordnen.3 Charles Dickens gilt als der erste große englische Romancier der Stadt; sein Name ist untrennbar mit London verknüpft.4 Sein London – realistisch erzählt und zugleich symbolisch aufgeladen – ist gekennzeichnet durch Lebendigkeit und Chaos, gerade in der Beschreibung von Menschenmengen, Mobilität und Veränderung, aber auch durch Anonymität, Hilflosigkeit, Armut, Verzweiflung und Verbrechen.5 Das gesellschaftliche 1 Boswell's Life of Johnson, hg. von George Birbeck Hill, revidiert von L.F. Powell, Vol. III: The Life (1776-1780) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), S. 178. 2 Vgl. dazu Max Byrd, London Transformed: Images of the City in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven [u.a.]: Yale UP, 1978), S. 3. 3 Einen umfassenden Überblick über London in der Literatur bietet beispielsweise Nick Rennison, Hg., Waterstone's Guide to London Writing (Brentford: Waterstone's, 1999), von "London Before the Great Fire" bis hin zu "London Since 1945". 4 Dies wird selbst in einer 2004 erschienenen Aufsatzsammlung zu London im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert noch hervorgehoben. Lawrence Phillips schreibt einleitend: "In the popular imagination the author most pre-eminently associated with London must be Dickens, even if by way of a Lionel Bart musical, a David Lean film, or a Disney cartoon." Lawrence Phillips, "Introduction", Lawrence Phillips, Hg., The Swarming Streets: Twentieth-Century Representations of London (Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2004), S. 1. 5 Vgl. Dickens' London: An Imaginative Vision. Mit einer Einführung von Peter Ackroyd, Text: Piers Dudgeon. (London: Headline Book Publ., 1989 [11987]), S. 12-17. "London was his great subject. He was the first novelist clearly (if not necessarily consciously) to see that a new form of life was being created, and as a result he has justly been called 'the first great novelist of the industrial city'. He became the chronicler of London at a uniquely propitious moment: even as he wrote it was growing all around him and throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the 'great Oven', as he sometimes called it, was spreading through Bloomsbury, Islington and St John's Wood in the North and, in the West and South, through Paddington, Bayswater, South Kensington, Lambeth, Clerkenwell, Peckham and elsewhere. It 2 Leben der Ober- und Mittelschicht findet seinen Ausdruck auch in der sogenannten silver fork novel, die ihre Blütezeit zwischen 1825 und 1845 hat; die zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts stetig wachsenden Slums im East End werden in den slum novels etwa von George Gissing detailliert beschrieben.6 Im frühen 20. Jahrhundert sind es die modernistischen Stadtdarstellungen von T.S. Eliot und Virginia Woolf, die das Bild Londons nachhaltig prägen. Während London in The Waste Land (1922) zum Symbol der modernen, d.h. industrialisierten, mechanisierten, inhumanen Zivilisation avanciert und als solches überwiegend mit negativen Konnotationen von Verzweiflung, Zerstörung, Fragmentierung, Desillusionierung, Leere und Einöde behaftet ist7, gestaltet es Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) positiver, indem sie die Stadt nicht nur mit Tod, sondern auch mit Leben assoziiert. Die 'äußere Realität' Londons wird dabei sichtbar in der 'inneren Realität' der Protagonisten, in ihren Wahrnehmungen, Eindrücken, Gedanken, ihrem 'Bewusstseinsstrom'.
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