The Literary Psychogeography of London

This Pivot book examines literary elements of urban topography that have animated Alan Moore, Peter Ackroyd, and Iain Sinclair's respective representations of London-ness. Ann Tso argues these authors write London "psychogeographically" to deconstruct popular visions of London with colonial and neoliberal undertones. Moore's psychogeography consists of bird's-eye views that reveal the brute force threatening to unravel Londonscape from within; Ackroyd's aims to detect London sensuously, since every new awareness recalls an otherworldly London; Sinclair's conjures up a narrative consciousness made erratic by London's disunified landscape. Drawing together the dystopian, the phenomenological, and the postcolonial, Tso explores how these texts characterize "London-ness" as estranging.

Ann Tso is Instructor of English at Lethbridge College, Canada. Much of her research concerns popular re-imaginings of world cities, particularly theories of worlding and alternate histories. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Neo-Victorian Studies, The Literary London Journal, and Journal of Narrative Theory.