Memories from Lisbon

European Social Science History Conference, Glasgow, April 2012

Memories from Lisbon

an integrative approach to study urban space and its literary representation

Daniel Alves (IHC)Ana Isabel Queiroz (IELT)


Introduction


• The literary representation of Lisbon was studied from 35 novels published between 1854 and 2009, written by 30 authors, including some of the most famous in the Portuguese literature.

Lisbon imaginary


Defining ‘literary space’

• the territory temporally referenced and dated as the setting for action, or evoked by the characters, that can be found in the real territory, and thus drawn on a map


Study area – Lisbon (84,62 km2)

Urban growth along main boulevards (simplified)


Methodology


Urban space and ‘chronotopes’

Ring 3 - the area of the city with greater urban and demographic dynamism since the 1960s

Ring 1 - the 19th century city

Ring 2 - urban and demographic development until the 1950s

• Space:


Urban space and ‘chronotopes’

• Time:

– 1st Period - from 1852 to 1910 (Monarchy)

– 2nd Period - from 1910 to 1926(First Republic)

– 3rd Period - from 1926 to 1974 (Dictatorship)

– 4th Period - from 1974 to the present (Democracy)


Analyzing the ‘literary space’

• Spatial distribution– Average Nearest

Neighborhood

• Space and time– Chi-square– Spearman Rank Coefficient

• Density and dimension– Kernel point density– Home Range


‘Literary space’ = Home range 95%


Results and discussion


Spatial distributionPlaces:Ring 1 = 79%Ring 2 = 18%Ring 3 = 3%

Average Nearest Neighborhood: • Clustered in the nineteenth century city (ring 1); • Random in the rest (rings 2 and 3).

•Literature about Lisbon tends to depict the historical and consolidated urban space


Space and time (places)

• Chi-square =103,9 (p-value < 0.01)

• Although literature concentrates its imaginary in the old city between the 1st and the 3rd periods, with time, the literary space tends to expand from the city core into urbanized areas of the first half of the 20th century

N % N % N % All1st 225 87 31 12 4 1,5 260

2nd 197 88 22 9,8 5 2,2 2243rd 192 79 43 18 7 2,9 2424th 177 66 77 29 14 5,2 268

Ring 1 Ring 2 Ring 3


Space and time (areas)

0,00

10,00

20,00

30,00

40,00

50,00

60,00

0 1 2 3 4Periods

Are

a K

m2

• Spearman = 0,46898 (p-value < 0.01)

• With the exception of the novels from the 3rd period, the tendency of the literary space is to embrace ever larger areas of the city

. each novel

_ tendency


Density (places by period)1st

3rd 4th

2nd


Density and location (places)

• From first to last period, there is a gradual fragmentation of the literary space, and a change in its composition

• The core, while located in substantially the same area, it becomes increasingly thinner

• But until the end of the 3rd period, it's the 19th century city that concentrates the writers attention

• In the 4th period, we observe the implosion of the aggregate core and other centers of lower expression become visible, now also in ring 2

• This change can result from the consolidation of urban experiences in other areas of the modern city as well as transformations regarding city's mobility


Dimension (areas by period)1st

3rd 4th

2nd



Dimension and location (areas)

• The common literary space is very restricted in the first and third periods, seemingly expanding in the second, and essentially in the last period

• The cumulative space seems to evolve differently, apparently falling between the first and third periods, and then expanding very significantly in the last period

• The results suggest, for a period of more than 100 years, between 1852 and 1974, a literary imaginary spatially linked to the nineteenth century city



Conclusions• Literary spaces of each of the historical periods gain the

representation of social space, with significance for the history and geography of the city

• An integrative methodology to conciliate a subjective and an objective reading of the city space

• The methodology used in this researchbecomes comparable and replicable usinganother literary corpus or other geography

• The incorporation of dimension and timeallows comparison of the literary space ofthe novels, or sets of novels, and itsexploration in combination with data fromdifferent origins and natures



PlacesPoints (e.g. Moretti 1999) Points and Spots (e.g.

Cooper and Gregory 2011)Points, Spots and Polygons (Alves and Queiroz 2012)

Location Location LocationStructure Structure

Dimension

Space

Points Spots Polygons

Conclusions

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Memories from Lisbon

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