The city is an essential theme of modernity in literature, architecture, photography and film. This book first focuses on ardent reactions to the metropolitan explosion in the nineteenth century, with Baudelaire and Poe as key figures. More recent representations of the city are then investigated, in Europe and the United States. Lombardo reflects on the way in which the changes in human perception created by urbanization are expressed in the various arts, in terms of form and content.

PATRIZIA LOMBARDO teaches French, Film, and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is the author of The Three Paradoxes of Roland Barthes and numerous articles in Critique and Critical Quarterly.

Introduction Edgar Allen Poe: The Domain of Artifice Van Gogh and Hofmannsthal: Colours and Silence Baudelaire, Haussmann, Fustel de Coulanges: The Modern Metropolis and the Ancient City Trieste as Frontier: From Slataper to Del Giudice and Bazlen Also Rossi: The White Walls of the City Massimo Cacciari and the Philosophy of the City Absence and Revelation: Photography as the Art of Nostalgia The Image versus the Visible: From Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life to David Lynch's Lost Highway Martin Scorsese and the Rhythm of the Metropolis Notes General Bibliography Index