Abstract
The entry compares the flâneur in Hjalmar Söderberg’s debut novel to the one established by Baudelaire, which was later conceptually refined by Walter Benjamin. It is claimed that the flânerie is almost free-floating, sometimes tied to certain characters, sometimes not. The invisible extra-diegetic third person narrator comes to resemble a camera lens. Förvillelser also contains traits of precinematic media that further strengthen the link to the visual and cinematic qualities in a novel that was published almost simultaneously with the production of the very first film segments (1895).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Baudelaire, Charles. 2011. To a passer-by. In The flowers of evil. Trans. Cyril Scott. Project Gutenberg.
Benjamin, Walter. 1999. The arcades project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Grøtta, Marit. 2015. Baudelaire’s media aesthetics: The gaze of the Flâneur and 19th century media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.
Nesci, Catherine. 2014. Memory, desire, lyric: The Flâneur. In The Cambridge companion to the city in literature, ed. Kevin R. McNamara, 69–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Söderberg, Hjalmar. 2014. Diversions. Translated from the Swedish by David Barrett. Published by David Barrett.
Soila, Tytti. 2010. Passion at the threshold: Doctor Glas the Flaneur in the films of rune Carlstén and Mai Zetterling. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 1: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v1i0.5227.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Wrethed, J. (2022). Hjalmar Söderberg’s Stockholm: The Precinematic Flâneur in Förvillelser [Diversions]. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62419-8_340
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62419-8_340
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62418-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62419-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities