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LEHAN, RICHARD. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). xvi + 330 pp. $45 hardcover, $17.95 paper.
It is characteristic of what can be called Richard Lehan's declarative style that the subtitle of his magisterial study of the city in literature reveals a great deal about his subject matter and critical method. His subject is not only literary representations of the city but also the relationship of these representations to the discernible major shifts in the nature and conception of experience which are their inseparable matrixes and thus offer as well an explanation of them. To Lehan, history is real. Societies and ideas change, and literature changes with them, and all can be described as part of the complex reality that we call the past.
Given this hugely welcome reaffirmation of man's ability to know and also to state his knowledge, it is...