Flaneur
Flâneur ( pronounced: [flanuʁ] ), from the French noun flâneur , means "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer". Flânerie refers to the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. The flâneur was, first of all, a literary type from 19th-century France , essential to any picture of the streets of Paris . It carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure , the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. It was Walter Benjamin , drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire , who made him the object of scholarly interest in the twentieth century, as an emblematic figure of urban, modern experience. [1] Following Benjamin, the flâneur has become an important figure for scholars, artists and writers. Etymology The terms of flânerie date to the 16th or 17th century, denoting strolling, idling, often with the connotation of wasting time. But it was in the 19th century that a rich set of meanings a...
