Allegorie metropolitane. Metropoli come poetiche moderniste in Berlin Alexander Platz di Alfred Doeblin e Manhattan Transfer di John Dos Passos

PALA, MAURO

2004-01-01

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Abstract

For Alfred Döblin and John Dos Passos the urban complex is the quintessential site of modernity. The social totality as envisioned by Georg Simmel is crystallized in the metropolis, which encapsulates the peculiarities of modern social and economic structures. Allegorie metropolitane features a sustained analysis of two classics of modernist writing, Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and Dos Passos’ Manhattan Tranfer: these two texts are discussed with reference to modernist critique of realistic modes of representations and cult of tradition and in relation to the central themes of German expressionism and European Avantgarde. Both authors develop a set of highly original textual practices which challenge accepted forms of social theoretical discourse applied to urban representations; such practices are here simultaneosly explored for the first time as configurations of redemptive readings of the city- as- text – for Döblin – and mythopoietic formations in Dos Passos, in the wake of North American biblical tradition. Allegorie metropolitane relies on Benjamin’s critical insight of the allegory to classify these attempts at devising a formally innovative and morally significant representation of the city experience.