Dismantling the Figure of the Flâneur as a Reliable Narrator in Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” and Finn’s The Woman in the Window

Abstract

This research is a comparative study between two literary works from different literary movements; Edgar Allan Poe‘s 19th century short story ―The Man of the Crowd‖ and A.J. Finn‘s contemporary novel The Woman in the Window. Considering the time gap between the two works, this thesis attempts to study the evolution of the figure of flâneur in ―The Man of the Crowd‖ as the modern version of the flâneur, and in The Woman in the Window as the postmodern version of the flâneuse. According to the works of literary critics Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, they both mention specific characteristics that shape the figure of the modern flâneur, whereas Aimée Boutin (PhD) discusses postmodern aspects of flânerie. Thus after the relevant data collection to the flâneur and flânerie, critical analysis is applied on different literary texts extracted from the two works under study accordingly to the theoretical framework. This process dismantles the figure of the flâneur in both works and therefore deduces the evolutionary aspects of postmodern flânerie. As a result, the pedestrian modern flâneur who wanders the city streets to observe society eventually grows to be the postmodern indoor flâneuse who relies on technology to practice flânerie.