Abstract
Franco Moretti discusses a letter that Thomas Mann received from a reader of his first novel Buddenbrooks set in Lubëck, in 1901. The writer of the letter had immensely enjoyed the novel but wonders why. He writes: ‘so little happens, I should be bored, yet I am not. It is strange. How did the everyday manage to become so interesting?’ (Moretti 2014, p. 79). For Moretti, this note embodies a shift that had taken place at some point in the course of the nineteenth century, at the start of which everyday life was barely discussed and by the end of which ‘the everyday’ had become a topic of intense fascination. It remains such a topic today. The development of the city is one of the most well-documented aspects of this same period and the connection between the everyday and the city is a vital one.
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Bown, A. (2016). ‘How Did the Everyday Manage to Become So Interesting?’. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54911-2_5
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