{"title":"‘The Effect of London’: Urban Atmospheres and Alice Meynell’s London Impressions","authors":"Cigdem Talu","doi":"10.1163/2208522x-02010148","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nThis essay examines urban atmospheres and emotions in the 1898 essay collection London Impressions by British writer, poet and suffragist Alice Meynell. I argue atmospheres are spatialised emotions and investigate the atmospheric dimension of Meynell’s text and her impressions, through a vocabulary of immersion and movement. Within her own manipulation of a ‘visual’ vocabulary, Meynell transforms impressions into atmospheres, the visual into sensorial, moving from the painterly to atmospheric experience, notably through the medium of fog and smoke and other climate indicators. I argue urban atmospheres are the main feature the text brings forth (even through – and perhaps especially because of – the filter of the written word). By probing the application of the history of emotions’ methodologies within architectural and urban history, I argue the concept of ‘atmosphere’ is a productive analytical category to examine visual and textual sources.","PeriodicalId":29950,"journal":{"name":"Emotions-History Culture Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Emotions-History Culture Society","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2208522x-02010148","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This essay examines urban atmospheres and emotions in the 1898 essay collection London Impressions by British writer, poet and suffragist Alice Meynell. I argue atmospheres are spatialised emotions and investigate the atmospheric dimension of Meynell’s text and her impressions, through a vocabulary of immersion and movement. Within her own manipulation of a ‘visual’ vocabulary, Meynell transforms impressions into atmospheres, the visual into sensorial, moving from the painterly to atmospheric experience, notably through the medium of fog and smoke and other climate indicators. I argue urban atmospheres are the main feature the text brings forth (even through – and perhaps especially because of – the filter of the written word). By probing the application of the history of emotions’ methodologies within architectural and urban history, I argue the concept of ‘atmosphere’ is a productive analytical category to examine visual and textual sources.