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Urban Hermitage In Literature Of The City, Mark Ryan Mengel

Open Access Theses

Since Aristotle, theory and literature concerning the city has centered around the participant--those citizens who operate within the city system in more or less recognizable ways (i.e. politicians, police, rioters, workers, etc.). This thesis adds to that body of work by investigating the emergence and significance not of the participant, but rather of the nonparticipant who exists within the city system but is denied interaction within that system. I term this figure the hermit.

Chapter 1 focuses on establishing a theoretical framework for the hermit's emergence, using primarily Michel De Certeau's notions of city participation from his book The Practice …