Literary Second Cities

Jason Finch is Assistant Professor in English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Previously published works include Deep Locational Criticism: Imaginative Place in Literary Research and Teaching and E.M. Forster and English Place: A Literary Topography.Lieven Ameel is Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Tampere, Finland.  Previously published works include Helsinki in Early Twentieth-Century Literature: Urban Experiences in Finnish Prose Fiction 1890-1940, and Language, Space and Power: Urban Entanglements (ed.). Markku Salmela is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Tampere, Finland. Previously published works include Paul Auster's Spatial Imagination and The Grotesque and the Unnatural (ed.).

“The geographical diversity of the research offered in this book is one of its greatest assets, together with the contributors’ methods and perspectives which go beyond literary studies and incorporate other disciplines and artistic fields, such as photography, architecture and urban studies. ... The volume is undoubtedly a valuable contribution to literary urban studies, to cultural geography and, more broadly, to comparative literary studies, that brings to light the richness of these lesser-known literary cities in European cultures and beyond.” (Patricia García, CompLit. Journal of European Literature, Arts and Society, Vol. 1 (3), 2022)

• 1. The Second City in Literary Urban Studies: Methods, Approaches, Key Thematics - Jason Finch, Lieven Ameel and Markku Salmela.- 2.  World Cities and Second Cities: Imagining Growth and Hybridity in Modern Literature - Bart Keunen.- 3. Comic Novel, City Novel: David Lodge and Jonathan Coe Reinterpreted by Birmingham - Jason Finch.- 4. ‘A Sort of Second London in Every Thing but Vitiousness’: Bristol in Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 1700–50 - Adam Borch.- 5. Cities within a Second City: The Case of Literary Tartu - Mart Velsker and Ene-Reet Soovik.- 6. Still Learning from Las Vegas: Imagining America’s Urban Other - Markku Salmela.- 7. The Capital of Otherness: A Geocritical Exploration of Diyarbakır, Turkey - Francesco Marilungo.- 8. Narva: A Literary Border Town - Elle-Mari Talivee.- 9. Riku Korhonen’s Kahden ja yhden yön tarinoita as Reflection on the Suburban Fragmentation of Community - Lieven Ameel and Tuomas Juntunen.- 10. “Away from here to Tjottahejti”: Spatial and Sexual (Re-)Orientation in Places of Secondariness in Contemporary Swedish Fiction - Sophie Wennerscheid.- 11. Moving beyond Venice: Literary Landscapes of Movement in Northern Italy’s “Diffused City” - Giada Peterle.- 12. Second to None: Literary Geographies of Second Cities - Marc Brosseau.