Cities and Fantasy Across Cultures, 1830–1930

This innovative collection of essays examines the impact of the city on fantasy and of fantasy on understandings of the city during a period of increased urbanization and cultural connectedness (1830–1930). Technologies such as the railroad, steam power, and the telegraph increased the speed and frequency of both urban migration and urban cross-cultural encounters, alongside conflicts stemming from colonialism, differing ideologies, travel, and trade; these urban experiences generated the need for new and often fantastic literary representations of the city. By juxtaposing different urban spaces for analysis, moving away from (national) periodizations, and highlighting interdisciplinary methods, the essays in this volume uncover a significant transnational dialogue, mediated via the lens of the fantastic, that occurs both within and among cities during this period.

Divided into three sections, Urban Histories and Speculative Alternatives, Urban Form and the Fantastic, and Transnational Mobilities and Urban Imaginaries, the book actively puts different cities and fantastic traditions into conversation – in metaphorical, physical, or symbolic terms. The collection’s cross-cultural prisms and interdisciplinary approaches illuminate the global reach of fantasy and the dynamic intersections between the fantastic and cities from a wide range of countries, including Argentina, Chile, China, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Russia, Spain, South Africa, Sudan, and the United States.