Literature and the Peripheral City

Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed cities. The essays in this collection explore urban peripheries through readings of literature from four continents, taking the reader on a journey from global urban hubs such as London and New York to Nordic capitals and cities like Santiago and Johannesburg. The book shows powerfully that peripheral areas are essential to bo th urban fiction and the identities of cities. The urban experience keeps feeding on images from the margins and hinterlands, which help cities and their parts define themselves. Without peripheries there would be no centres.

Jason Finch is Lecturer in English Literature at Abo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. He is the author of E. M. Forster and English Place: A Literary Topography (2011) and co-editor of two further collections. At present he is researching London slum writing and the transnational career of William Plomer.

Markku Salmela is University Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Tampere, Finland. His work is informed by a decidedly spatial approach to literary fiction while addressing the general areas of American literature, landscape studies, naturalism and postmodernism. He is also co-editor of The Grotesque and the Unnatural (2011).

Lieven Ameel is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He currently examines narratives in urban planning. Together with Sirpa Tani, he has published several articles on parkour. Recent publications include Helsinki in Early Twentieth-Century Literature (2014) and the co-edited volume Language, Space & Power: Urban Entanglements (2012).