Nora Pleßke: The Intelligible Metropolis. Urban Mentality in Contemporary London Novels. Bielefeld: transcript, 2014.

Nora Pleßke’s prizewinning (Helene-Richter-Preis 2014) dissertation, written while she was a student at Passau, undertakes the laudable task of responding to the “spatial turn” by replacing the traditional illegibility of the city with an approach concentrating on its semiotic intelligibility. However, the theory-heavy jargon and sheer size of the publication raise concerns over the spatiality and intelligibility of the very book under consideration. The Intelligible Metropolis begins by deriving a concept of “urban mentality” from the existing theories on mentality and urbanity. In this, Pleßke convincingly follows a course in which “Cultural studies and the history of mentality specifically deal with the mental aspects of culture: thoughts, ideas, emotions and habitual norms. […] Cultural Studies and the history of mentalities are […] related in their semiotic approach.”. Consequently, the ‘urban’ features in the book not only as “a space”, but also as “a state of mind” for which “narratives and novels present viable sources”.