1 Introduction 11
1.1 Setting the Theme: Intelligibility and Legibility 11
1.2 ''New'' London (1997-2007) 15
1.3 Selecting the Literary Corpus 20
1.4 The Present State of Research 24
1.5 Structure and Approach 31
Theory and Methodology 37
2 Theories and Categories of Mentality 39
2.1 The Definition of Mentality 39
2.1.1 The History of Mentalities 39
2.1.2 Historical and Contemporary Social Constructions of Reality 44
2.1.3 Mentality as Organon and Rhizome 46
2.2 Determinants of Mentality 51
2.2.1 Collectivity and Collective Mentality 52
2.2.2 Time and Temporal Mentality 55
2.2.3 Space and Spatial Mentality 57
2.2.4 Collective Space-Time Compressions 70
2.3 The Concept of Mentality 72
3 Theories of Urbanity 75
3.1 City and Urbanity 76
3.1.1 Definition of the City 76
3.1.2 Urbanity as the Metropolitan Way of Life 77
3.1.3 Metamorphosis of the City and Transformation of Urbanity 82
3.2 Urban Theoretical Approaches to Mentalities 83
3.2.1 Georg Simmel''s Sociology of Modern Urbanity 84
3.2.2 The Chicago School of Urban Sociology 90
3.2.3 New Urban Political Economy and City Culture 95
3.2.4 The Contemporary City and Postmodern Urbanity 100
4 The Concept of Urban Mentality 111
4.1 Ambivalences of Urban-Generic Mentality 114
4.1.1 City and Country 115
4.1.2 Public and Private 116
4.1.3 Sociability and Anomie 118
4.1.4 Heterogeneity and Homogeneity 119
4.1.5 Familiarity and Strangeness 120
4.1.6 Community and Individualism 121
4.1.7 Indifference and Involvement 122
4.1.8 Apathy and Vigilance 123
4.2 Factors of Influence on Urban-Specific Mentality 126
4.2.1 Culture 127
4.2.2 Imaginary 129
4.2.3 Image 132
4.2.4 Text 134
4.2.5 Narrative 137
4.2.6 Atmosphere 139
4.2.7 Emotion 143
4.2.8 Identity 144
4.3 The Model of Urban Mentality 145
5 Methodological Implications 149
5.1 Methodological Approaches to Mentality 149
5.1.1 Quantitative and Qualitative Methods 150
5.1.2 Literary and Cultural Studies and the Concept of Mentalities 153
5.1.3 Narratological Approaches 154
5.2 A Spatio-Nanatological Analysis of Mentality 163
5.2.1 Literary Topographies 166
5.2.2 Boundaries 169
5.2.3 Chronotopes 172
5.2.4 Metaphors 177
Analysis of London Mentality 187
6 Cityscape 189
6.1 Public and Private 190
6.1.1 Interpenetrations of Public and Private Drama 191
6.1.2 Private Dereliction and Public Regeneration 199
6.1.3 Enclosed Privacies in the Global City 206
6.1.4 Public ''Aparthide'' and Search for Intimacy 216
6.1.5 Isolationist Structures of Mentality 221
6.2 Underground London 225
6.2.1 Isotopic, Utopic, and Heterotopic Space 229
6.2.2 Subterranean Sociability 238
6.2.3 The Metropolitan (Un)Conscious 251
6.2.4 Deep Collective Space-Time Compressions 257
6.2.5 Subterranean Structures of Mentality 264
6.3 Navigating the Flux 269
6.3.1 Mapping the Metropolis 271
6.3.2 Touring the Streets of London 277
6.3.3 Sensing the City 284
6.3.4 Apprehending Urbanity 291
6.3.5 (Sub)Textual Structures of Mentality 301
6.4 The Palimpsestuous City 304
6.4.1 Historical Layering 305
6.4.2 Psychogeographical Tracing 311
6.4.3 Socio-Cultural Re-Con-Textualisation 325
6.4.4 Intertextual Writing 335
6.4.5 Hypeitextual Simulation 339
6.4.6 Palimpsestuous Structures of Mentality 347
7 Socioscape 353
7.1 Urban Sociability 353
7.1.1 Networks of Human Interrelation 355
7.1.2 Urban islands of Loneliness 368
7.1.3 Metropolitan Voids and Millennial Anomie 375
7.1.4 Transcultural Contact Zones 381
7.1.5 Mental Structures of Relational Fluidity 391
7.2 London Metropolarities 392
7.2.1 The Urban Middle-Class Crisis 394
7.2.2 (Un)Homely Cosmopolis 400
7.2.3 Gendered (Dis)Orientations 410
7.2.4 The Urban Pariah 425
7.2.5 Mental Structures of Deviation 432
8 Idloscape 435
8.1 The City and the Citizen 436
5.1.1 Identityscape and Performativity 437
8.1.1 Bodyscape and Psychasthenia 454
8.1.2 Mindscape and Screening 467
8.1.3 Hypertrophic Structures of Mentality 472
5.2 The Urban State of Mind 475
8.2.1 Simulated Anxiousness 476
8.2.2 The Spectres of Terror 486
8.2.3 Millennial Apocalyptic Visions 501
8.2.4 Terror Structures of Mentality 510
9 Conclusion 513
Works Cited 531
Primary Literature 531
Further Primary Sources 532
Secondary Sources 532
Appendix: London Novels (1997-2007) 561
Index 573
Acknowledgements 575
