Louis Sebastien Mercier's Representation of Urban Space
In the conclusion, I demonstrate that Mercier was a modern intellectual avant la lettre due to his concerted effort to individually affect the physical space of the city for the collective good through his actions and his writings. I also show that Mercier's urban chronicles are of historical and literary value: not only does he capture the Zeitgeist of his time by representing the moral physiognomy of the moment but he also masterfully describes Paris, Parisians, and urban phenomena by revealing hidden realities of the city. He unveils the interconnectedness of urban life and illustrates how the detail relates to the whole and in doing so explores human nature in a new way. For Mercier, the city is an entity, which undergoes constant change. He demands that literature represent these relationships through its capacity to capture movement.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign