Copyright © Graeme Gilloch 1996

The right of Graeme Gilloch to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 1996 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

First published in paperback 1997.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1    Urban Images: From Ruins to Revolutions

2    Urban Memories: Labyrinth and Childhood

3    Dialectical Images: Paris and the Phantasmagoria of Modernity

4    Urban Allegories: Paris, Baudelaire and the Experience of Modernity

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to a number of individuals and institutions who contributed to this book since its beginnings as a doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge. I would especially like to thank John Thompson for his guidance, support and patience throughout. I would also like to thank Barry Sandwell who first introduced me to Benjamin’s work. I am grateful to David Frisby, Andrew Bowie, Jon Fletcher, Anthony Giddens, Hans-Joachim Hahn, Thomas Regehly (and the Kolloquium fur Kritische Theorie in Frankfurt am Main) and Charles Turner for their thoughtful comments, suggestions and ideas. All errors, omissions and oversights are of course mine.

I wish to express my gratitude to those institutions whose generous financial support made this book possible: the Economic and Social Research Council, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the British Council and especially the Leverhulme Trust.

I am grateful to the Akademie der Kunst in Berlin for access to their archives and to the T. W. Adorno-Archiv (Frankfurt am Main) and Suhrkamp Verlag and Harvard University Press for kindly giving permission to include archival and previously untranslated material from Benjamin’s work. (Harvard University Press will publish the first volume of a three-volume collection of selected essays of Walter Benjamin in the Fall of 1996.) I am also grateful to Telos Press Ltd. for permission to include material first published with them. I am grateful to Verso/New Left Books for permission to include material from One-Way Street and Other Writings, 1985 and Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, 1983, both by Walter Benjamin. Thanks are also due to Gill Motley and the staff at Polity Press and Blackwells for their patience and help.

I would especially like to thank Bernadette Boyle for all her encouragement and help. Above all, I wish to thank my parents, Audrey and Peter, for all their understanding, patience and support.

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

List of Abbreviations

Where possible, existing English language translations have been used. Other translations are my own. References to material in the Passagen-Werk are given by Konvolut number and page (e.g., J67,1, GS V, p. 438) or page of translation (e.g., N6,5, Smith ed., 1989, p. 57). The following abbreviations are used in the text: