The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature

This book addresses the way cities have given rise to key aesthetic dispositions that are central to debates in World Literature.

Through a series of chapters spanning a number of metropolises across the globe, this book addresses the way cities have given rise to key aesthetic dispositions, acts of linguistic and cultural translation, topographic and global imaginaries, and narratives of self-fashioning that are central to debates in World Literature.This book forges new ground in the relationship between cities and World Literature. Through a series of essays spanning a variety of metropolises, it shows how cities have given rise to key aesthetic dispositions, acts of linguistic and cultural translation, topographic conceptualizations, global imaginaries, and narratives of self-fashioning that are central to understanding World Literature and its debates. Alongside an introduction and three theoretical chapters, each chapter focuses on a particular city in the Global North or Global South, and brings World Literary debates—on translation, literary networks, imperial and migrant imaginaries, centers and peripheries—into conversation with the urban literary histories of Beijing, Bombay/Mumbai, Dublin, Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Lagos, London, Mexico City, Moscow and St Petersburg, New York, Paris, Singapore, and Sydney.