What is the purpose of a flâneur?
The figure of the flâneur has been used—among other things – to explain modern, urban experience, to explain urban spectatorship, to explain the class tensions and gender divisions of the nineteenth-century city, to describe modern alienation, to explain the sources of mass culture, to explain the postmodern …
What is flâneur in art?
Flâneur is a French term meaning ‘stroller’ or ‘loafer’ used by nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire to identify an observer of modern urban life. Camille Pissarro. The Little Country Maid 1882. Tate. Baudelaire identified the flâneur in his essay The Painter of Modern Life (1863) as the dilettante …
Who came up with the flâneur?
Charles Baudelaire (1845) The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family. The Parisian writer Charles Baudelaire established the flâneur as a literary figure, referring to him as the “gentleman stroller of city streets.”
What is flâneur in literature?
As described by James Wood in How Fiction Works, the flaneur is. the loafer, usually a young man, who walks the streets with no great urgency, seeing, looking, reflecting. Flânerie describes aimless behaviour. In French it’s spelt like this: flâneur.
What is the role of the flâneur within a society?
The flâneur is still a shopper, but one who finds it more and more difficult to peruse for artistic moments and not for goods. Her role is to resist the commodities pushed toward her and instead take in the images that will be durable residue for a poem or painting or a building—or even a good conversation.
Can a woman be a flâneur?
Griselda Pollock said, “There is no female equivalent of the quintessential masculine figure, the flaneur.” Deborah Parsons said, “the urban observer has been regarded as an exclusively male figure. The opportunities and activities of flânerie were predominantly the activities of the man of means.”
What does flâneur mean in English?
noun, plural flâ·neurs [flah-nœr]. / flɑˈnœr/. French. a person who lounges or strolls around in a seemingly aimless way; an idler or loafer: the flâneur, that cool, aloof observer of urban society.
How do you use flânerie in a sentence?
Les rues de la vieille ville prêtent à la flânerie. The streets in the old town are ideal for a leisurely stroll.
What is a flâneur man?
French. a person who lounges or strolls around in a seemingly aimless way; an idler or loafer: the flâneur, that cool, aloof observer of urban society.
How do you become a flaneur?
To be a flaneur is to wander the city streets, to see and be seen, and there is no city better for wandering than Paris. The concept of the “flanerie” (the wander) was itself created in Paris by Charles Baudelaire.
How do you use the word flaneur in a sentence?
It turns the boulevardier into a sequestered individual, the flaneur into a figure of privacy. Enlightened flaneur, Patrick Smith never separates gazing from questioning.
Can a woman be a flaneur?