The Modern City Experienced through its Bridges: The Bridge in London and New York in the Works of Dickens and Dos Passos
The Modern City Experienced through its Bridges: The Bridge in London and New York in the Works of Dickens and Dos Passos

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the representations of bridges in the modern city of Dickens and Dos Passos. These representations are indicative of the bridge acting as an urban topos. A place of identification and a closed world in itself, the city bridge is capable of producing its own space and, thus, of affecting the mood of the city inhabitants, causing them to act in a manner revelatory of the connection between place, space and event.The paper explores the interactions within this triad, which becomes possible through the involvement of the city inhabitant. Another task the paper sets itself is to explore the capacity of the city bridge of sustaining the space it produces by forming stable heterotopias. Their function in the analyzed passages is aesthetic and points towards modernist representations of the city as opposed to traditional representations of the bridge, which in the industrial city, can be related to heavy symbolism connected to the lower river.

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