The Art of Taking a Walk: Flanerie, Literature, and Film in Weimar Culture / Edition 1

by Anke Gleber

Overview

Anke Gleber examines one of the most intriguing and characteristic figures of European urban modernity: the observing city stroller, or flaneur. In an age transformed by industrialism, the flaneur drifted through city streets, inspired and repelled by the surrounding scenes of splendor and squalor. Gleber examines this often elusive figure in the particular contexts of Weimar Germany and the intellectual sphere of Walter Benjamin, with whom the concept of flanerie is often associated. She sketches the European influences that produced the German flaneur and establishes the figure as a pervasive presence in Weimar culture, as well as a profound influence on modern perceptions of public space.


The book begins by exploring the theory of literary flanerie and the technological changes—street lighting, public transportation, and the emergence of film—that gave a new status to the activities of seeing and walking in the modern city. Gleber then assesses the place of flanerie in works by Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and other representatives of Weimar literature, arts, and theory. She draws particular attention to the works of Franz Hessel, a Berlin flaneur who argued that flanerie is a "reading" of the city that perceives passersby, streets, and fleeting impressions as the transitory signs of modernity. Gleber also examines connections between flanerie and Weimar film, and discusses female flanerie as a means of asserting female subjectivity in the public realm.


The book is a deeply original and searching reassessment of the complex intersections among modernity, vision, and public space.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691002385
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/20/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Anke Gleber is Research Associate in Film Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She has written widely on European modernism, the Weimar Republic, and German film.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Pt. 1	Literature, Culture, Theory
Ch. 1	Walking Texts: Toward a Theory of Literary Flanerie	3
Ch. 2	The City of Modernity: Shifting Perspectives, Urban Transitions	23
Ch. 3	Passages of Flanerie: Kracauer and Benjamin	43
Pt. 2	Hessel in Berlin
Ch. 4	The Art of Walking: Reflections of Berlin	63
Ch. 5	Secret Berlin, A Junk Store of Happiness	85
Ch. 6	Fragments of Flanerie	109
Pt. 3	Flanerie and Film
Ch. 7	A Short Phenomenology of Flanerie	129
Ch. 8	Flanerie, or The Redemption of Visual Reality	151
Pt. 4	Female Flanerie
Ch. 9	Women on the Screens and Streets of Modernity: In Search of the Female Flaneur	171
Ch. 10	Weimar Women, Walkers, Writers: Irmgard Keun and Charlotte Wolff	191
Notes	215
Bibliography	265
Index	281