Wandering In The Arcades: On Benjamin's "Fl(?)neur" And Its Contemporary Cultural Significance

"Flaneur"which is proposed by Benjamin who is an aesthetician of German Frankfurt School in his research of the French lyrical poet Baudelaire in the 19th century is a very essential and influential concept.It especially refers to those people who can wander about in cities,experience and observe city life owing to the development of modern city.In order to uncover the experience of modernity,Benjamin lays his research on arcades in Paris,from the perspective of which he focuses on the"Flaneur",a modern unique class.After the brith of Benjamin's"the Arcades Project",literature and literary research often inquire into problems like city experience,city space and aesthetic modernity by making use of the image of"Flaneur".The image of Flaneur under the pen of Benjamin provides an important theoretical visual field for us to read and analyze city.This paper is comprised of introduction,body and conclusion,among which the body is divided into three chapters.Introduction It includes mainly the summary and comments of Benjamin's current research situation at home and abroad.It gives an account of the purpose,the research method and theoretical meaning.Chapter One This chapter examine closely the image of Flaneur in the street of Paris in the 19th century from theory field of vision of Baudelaire's works discussed by Benjamin.It disscuses that the Flaneur has deep cultural meaning in the capitalist society:An unchangeable historic destiny as Flaneur—artists in any cities cannot break away from the shadow of commodity after the development of capitalism.Chapter Two This chapter begins from an angel aesthetic modernity to study,explain and criticize the variety and multi-fields of modernity shown from Flaneur as an important cultural style.It consetrates on the discussion of the relationship of Flaneur,arcades and people and the problems of modernity like the lonely aesthetic features reflected in Flaneur of modern society and their sex ratio. Chapter Three This chapter places the image of Flaneur under the pen of Benjamin into the situstion of consumption society of post-modernity and then discusses the relations between Benjamin's image of Flaneur and consumption culture.In particular,it extends the study into its visual relation with modern life,visual consumption and everyday life aesthetic appreciation,and fully digs out the modern consumption cultural meanings of the image of Flaneur.Conclusion On the basis of the above discussion,this paper gets a conclusion:We cannot think Flaneur as a social type or a historic phenomenon in the 19th century ,but as a spiritual type or cultural phenomenon.Or rather,we should regard it as a literary theme and esthetics critique, a representation of city life experience,a representative image of the relationship between commodity and the common people as well as a special way and method for observing social cultures.