« Enfreindre le pacte ». Jacques Réda dans le périurbain

• Main Author: Filippo Zanghi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Journal of Urban Research 2009-10-01
• Series: Articulo: Journal of Urban Research
• Subjects: contemporary literature; landscape; peri-urban space; periphery; suburban space
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/articulo/1121

Borrowing from geographers their definition of suburban and peri-urban spaces, I intend to evaluate the role of geographical elements in the writings of Réda, and to question the breadth of his landscapes. While one can quite rightly consider him an heir to the great 19th-century authors who introduced urban landscape into literature, and while this urban landscape continues to influence accounts of escapades into Paris or its near suburbs, it nonetheless appears that this heritage encounters its limits when faced with railway stations that have sprung up « in the middle of the open fields », and with « houses made from a pinkish opera stage-setting material » which are christened « Résidences de la Ferme – in which the flatteringly empty word abolishes the meaning of the reality of the object thus designated ».