The neighborhoods of New Orleans have given rise to an extraordinary outpouring of important writing. Over the last century and a half or so, these stories and songs have given the city its singular place in the human imagination. This book leads the reader along five thoroughfares that define these different parts of town - Royal, St. Claude, Esplanade, Basin, and St. Charles - to explore how the writers who have lived around them have responded in closely related ways to the environments they share. On the outskirts of New Orleans today, the city's precarious relation to its watery surroundings and the vexed legacies of race loom especially large. But the city's literature shows us that these themes have been near to hand for New Orleans writers for several generations, whether reflected through questions of masquerade, dreams of escape, the innocence of children, or the power of money or of violence or of memory.
| ISBN: | 9781316512067 |
| Publication date: | 2nd March 2023 |
| Author: | T. R. Johnson |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 315 pages |
| Series: | Imagining Cities |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Literature: history and criticism Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Literary studies: poetry and poets Literary companions, book reviews and guides History of the Americas Travel and holiday guides |