Bibliography

The study of a sociology of the flâneuse was first proposed by feminist studies in the 1980s. A seminal role was played by an essay by Janet Wolff where the term flâneuse first appeared:

Janet Wollf, "The Invisible Flâneuse. Women and the Literature of Modernity", in Theory, Culture & Society, Volume 3, issue 3, pp. 37-46. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263276485002003005

Starting from the essay, several lines of inquires have investigated the figure of the flâneuse. The bibliography in the field includes academic and non-academic works, and covers a range of disciplines.

We provide here a selected list in chronological order from the most recent works:

On Virginia Woolf and the flâneuse

Elkin Lauren. 2016. Flâneuse : Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London, London, Vintage. [Chapter 4, "London: Bloomsbury", discusses Virginia Woolf; see also Elkin's article on The Guardian, 29 July 2016: www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/29/female-flaneur-women-reclaim-streets . Elkin also points out the first occurence of the term in an article by the poet and essayist Amy Levy: "In 1888 the British poet, essayist and novelist Amy Levy wrote, “The female club-lounger, the flâneuse of St James Street, latch-key in pocket and eye-glasses on the nose, remains a creature of the imagination". Amy Levy is extensively analysed in Parsons (2000).
Catherine Lanone, 2009. "The Non-Linear Dynamics of Virginia Woolf's London: from Elation to Street Haunting”, Caliban, 25, 315-322. journals.openedition.org/caliban/1639?lang=en#tocto1n3
Parsons Deborah L. 2000. Streetwalking the Metropolis : Women, the City and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [An extended analysis of the flâneuse in the literary works of the beginning of the 20th Century, with reference to Mrs. Dalloway and to works by, among the others, Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, Djuna Barnes, Elizabeth Bowen] global.oup.com/academic/product/streetwalking-the-metropolis-9780198186830?cc=it&lang=en&
Bowlby, Rachel. 1991. Capitolo "Walking, Women and Writing. Virginia Woolf as Flâneuse" in Still Crazy After All These Years, London, Routledge. www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203168400-5/walking-women-writing-virginia-woolf-fl%C3%A2neuse-rachel-bowlby [text also available in Tropismes, (1991) n.5: ojs.parisnanterre.fr/index.php/tropismes/article/view/225 ]

On the flâneuse (general / further historical and cultural contexts)

McIlvanney Siobhán and Gillian Ni Cheallaigh. 2019. Women and the City in French Literature and Culture : Reconfiguring the Feminine in the Urban Environment. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Wilson, Elizabeth. 2001. "The Invisible Flâneur", in The Contradictions of Culture: Cities: Culture: Women. Theory, Culture & Society. London: SAGE Publications Ltd
Solnit, Rebecca. 2001. Wanderlust. A History of Walking, London, Penguin, ]see in particular chapter III, "Lives on the Streets", e the sub-chapter "Walking After Midnight: Women, Sex and Public Space"]

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