1. The Second City in Literary Urban Studies: Methods, Approaches, Key Thematics - Jason Finch, Lieven Ameel and Markku Salmela -- 2. World Cities and Second Cities: Imagining Growth and Hybridity in Modern Literature - Bart Keunen -- 3. Comic Novel, City Novel: David Lodge and Jonathan Coe Reinterpreted by Birmingham - Jason Finch -- 4. ‘A Sort of Second London in Every Thing but Vitiousness’: Bristol in Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 1700–50 - Adam Borch -- 5. Cities within a Second City: The Case of Literary Tartu - Mart Velsker and Ene-Reet Soovik -- 6. Still Learning from Las Vegas: Imagining America’s Urban Other - Markku Salmela -- 7. The Capital of Otherness: A Geocritical Exploration of Diyarbakır, Turkey - Francesco Marilungo -- 8. Narva: A Literary Border Town - Elle-Mari Talivee -- 9. Riku Korhonen’s Kahden ja yhden yön tarinoita as Reflection on the Suburban Fragmentation of Community - Lieven Ameel and Tuomas Juntunen -- 10. “Away from here to Tjottahejti”: Spatial and Sexual (Re-)Orientation in Places of Secondariness in Contemporary Swedish Fiction - Sophie Wennerscheid -- 11. Moving beyond Venice: Literary Landscapes of Movement in Northern Italy’s “Diffused City” - Giada Peterle -- 12. Second to None: Literary Geographies of Second Cities - Marc Brosseau.

This book brings together geographers and literary scholars in a series of engagements near the boundaries of their disciplines. In urban studies, disproportionate attention has been given to a small set of privileged ‘first’ cities. This volume problematizes the dominance of such alpha cities, offering a wide perspective on ‘second cities’ and their literature. The volume is divided into three themed sections. ‘In the Shadow of the Alpha City’ problematizes the image of cities defined by their function and size, bringing out the contradictions and contestations inherent in cultural productions of second cities, including Birmingham and Bristol in the UK, Las Vegas in the USA, and Tartu in Estonia. ‘Frontier Second Cities’ pays attention to the multiple and trans-national pasts of second cities which occupy border zones, with a focus on Narva, in Estonia, and Turkish/Kurdish Diyarbakir. The final section, ‘The Diffuse Second City’, examines networks the diffuse secondary city made up of interlinked small cities, suburban sprawl and urban overspill, with literary case studies from Italy, Sweden, and Finland.

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