The Myth of Modern Cities in Literature and Film: A City of Frankenstein

© Samira Sasani

Junior Fellow (Dresden Fellowship Programme)

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Dr. Samira Sasani

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Chair of English Literary Studies

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Cities, buildings, spaces and different architectures are narratives telling stories and representing different myths. In other words, the cities we inhabit shape the stories we tell; therefore, for many architects, form follows fiction not function. The impact of modern man in shaping modern cities seems clear, but the role of the cities in shaping the urban myths has been the issue many literary critics have been trying to explore. Very much like the intelligent monster in Frankenstein, the modern cities we are living in are the man-made intelligent beings frequently arousing guilt and regret because of the discrepancy modern man sees between what he meant by creating modern cities and what he sees in reality. Jacques Tati’s film, Play Time, and Penelope Lively’s novel, City of the Mind, which respectively narrate Paris and London are studied in this research to show how these cities recount different myths and how they are playing the role of the major characters in the texts. In both Tati’s film and Lively’s novel, the flaneurs are walking in myth-making Paris and London and the audience see these cities through the eyes of the camera in the film and Mathew’s – Mathew is an architect himself – in the novel.