Skip to Main Content

Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity: Rise and Decline of an Urban Image

Online ISBN:
9780804787505
Print ISBN:
9780804758321
Publisher:
Stanford University Press
Book

Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity: Rise and Decline of an Urban Image

Published:
9 July 2008
Online ISBN:
9780804787505
Print ISBN:
9780804758321
Publisher:
Stanford University Press

Abstract

Since the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Barcelona has striven to sustain an image of modernity that distinguishes itself within Spain. This book traces the development of that image through texts that foreground key social and historical issues. It begins with Barcelona's “coming of age” in the 1888 Universal Exposition and focuses on the first major narrative work of modern Catalan literature, La febre d'or. Positing an inextricable link between literature and modernity, the book establishes a literary framework for the evolution of the image of Barcelona's modernity through the 1980s, when the consciousness of modernity took on an ironic circularity. Because the city is an aggregation of knowledge, the book draws from sociology, urban studies, sociolinguistics, history, psychoanalysis, and literary history to produce a complex account of Barcelona's self-reflection through culture. The last chapter offers a glimpse into the “post-historical” city, where temporality has been sacrificed to the spatialization associated with the seductions of the spectacle.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close