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Article: Walter Benjamin's myth of the flaneur.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- The Modern Language Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This article challenges the substance of what is accepted as a critical key to nineteenth-century urban experience: Walter Benjamin's concept of the flaneur. Benjamin's concept is based on incorrect readings of Baudelaire and Poe, and is conceived in opposition to earlier, journalistic depictions in which the flaneur features as an empirically observed and observing stroller within a whole spectrum of metropolitan types. The article exposes Benjamin's concept of the flaneur as a myth supporting his one-sided understanding of modernity as involving self-loss, alienation, and fetishization and shows that some of the journalistic sources he dismisses can assist an ...