What is a flâneur?

What is a flâneur?
(The familiar Englishnd academic) a definition of the flâneur is courtesy of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin's writings, and is a far cry from the traditional French translation of flâneur an idler or lounger. For Benjamin (Paris - Capital of the nineteenth century New Left Review 1968), the flâneur was the stroller and observer hidden in the crowd. His haunt was the developing consumerism that swept Paris in the nineteenth century. The arcades as described in Benjamin's The Arcades Project provided a protected urban space from which the flâneur could consume his surroundings.

Today, I believe that the street is the flâneur's drawing room, the cafe his study. The flâneur is a native of the cityscape. He can use the city as an open book; reading the street and the activities it contained. Hopefully you too can find the time to take part in a bit of flâneurie.

For more background see Keith Tester's book The Flaneur published in 1994 and Edmund White's The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris published in 2001 (commission from the sale of any books via this website help support the Buckingham Old Gaol).

Available at: http://www.flaneur.co.uk/frabout.html [Accessed on 17th October 2011 at 18.20]