SURYA KIRAN 1

Architecture and Modern Literature: A Review

Architecture and Modern Literature is an extensive work that analyses literary works of
nearly two centuries so as to identify the representation and interpretation of architectural space
in literary works trying to figure out how literature and architecture are interrelated in the context
of modernity. This study by David Spurr is pretty broad in the sense that he tries to bring in the
social, political and historical contexts of modernity by borrowing ideas from English, French
and German theoreticians and providing a new overview of their studies thus laying a foundation
for an emerging field of interdisciplinary study of architecture and literature. He proposes that
the study will focus on a series of instances in which architecture and modern literature come
together in ways that appear to break down the barriers between the two art forms, or at least to
construct bridges between them. (Spurr 3)
Spurr is trying to find answers to three fundamental questions in this endeavor of linking
architecture to literature. First and foremost is the changing nature of dwelling; [H]ow to live
(Spurr 249) is the aspect that literature tries to find out through the analysis of architecture while
architecture itself is a dynamic art form which has always had varying views on dwelling.
(Heideggers essay Building, Dwelling, Thinking). The second question he addresses is that of
the relation of literature to the historical past as perceived through the built environment. Finally,
he tries to link both these questions to the concept of subjectivity, as in, how architecture helps
define the concepts of memory, desire, crisis etc., in particular literary texts. In order to do this,
he draws examples from texts ranging from Odyssey to Highrise and utilizes close reading,
architectural theories, psychoanalytical theories, spatiality studies, philosophical principles etc.
The result of such a wider study is that even though its prime aim is to link architecture and

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literature, it brings in so many other fields together such as cultural history, urban studies, art
history, modernity studies etc.
The first chapter titles An End to Dwelling: Architectural and Literary Modernisms
tries to bring in new perspectives to the concept of dwelling from the architectural point of
view in the works of works by Dickens, Woolf, and Beckett. The rupture that architecture had
faced with the birth of modernity, a rupture with which architecture lost its sense of where it had
come from, where it was going, and what it meant beyond its most basic functions. (Spurr 250),
is interpreted from the literary and philosophical perspectives by analyzing the subjective notions
of human experiences in dwelling. While Walter Benjamins Marxist thoughts are used to
analyze Bleak House, it is gender and related issues that gets highlighted in the reading of Mrs.
Dalloway. The core argument of this chapter is the birth of a new sense of dwelling that links
itself with a notion of displacement.
The next two chapters; Demonic Spaces: Sade, Dickens, Kafka and Allegories of the
Gothic in the Long Nineteenth Century tries to focus itself on the concept of memory. With the
focus laid upon Gothic, it is an attempt to uncover the relation between modernity and the
historical past. Spurr is dealing with the ethical function of architecture and its violation of it in
these chapters to find out how people have contributed various insights that eventually affected
the meaning formation of the word gothic and the modern crises the term faces. The following
chapter Figures of Ruin and Restoration: Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc deals with the modern use
of gothic with nostalgia as a major theme and an attempt to link memory, representation, and
the built environment can be found here.
The chapters Prousts Interior Venice and Monumental Displacement in Ulysses
brings in the urban life into the picture and opens up the path towards postmodernity though

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Spurr doesnt make any direct reference to the latter movement. In his analysis of the
consciousness through the experiences assimilated in relation to the objects they confront in
space and time, he studies the objectivity of subjective experience. (Spurr 252).
The chapter titled Architecture in Frost and Stevens is an attempt to decipher
architectural metaphors in Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens by analyzing how they deal with the
theme of dwelling in relation with modernity.
The last chapter Annals of Junkspace: Architectural Disaffection in Contemporary
Literature is one that links itself more to the postmodern scenario with its title itself pointing
towards the concept that is going to discuss. Junkspace, a concept brought in by Koolhaas which
is more or less similar to Marc Auges concept non-place points to the present scenario where a
well-defined architecture in terms of cultural history is absent. Unlike the architectures of the
past which had rich symbolic and metaphorical associations, the postmodern architecture denies
itself to be a part of the narrative in terms of its cultural importance. To put it in Spurrs own
words, In the case of junkspace or the non-lieu, however, there is no mediation, no history to
which the fictional narrative can adhere. (224). This demands the analysis of literary texts in
terms of sociology, spatial theories and geocriticism to link architecture and literature.