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Flâneur (), from the French noun ''flâneur'', means "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer". ''Flânerie'' refers to the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. A near-synonym is boulevardier. The ''flâneur'' was, first of all, a literary type from 19th century France, essential to any picture of the streets of Paris. The word 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 this figure the object of scholarly interest in the 20th century, as an emblematic archetype of urban, modern experience.〔Gregory Shaya, "(The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860–1910, )" ''American Historical Review'' 109 (2004), par 10.〕 Following Benjamin, the flâneur has become an important symbol 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 and definitions surrounding the ''flâneur'' took shape. The ''flâneur'' was defined in a long article in Larousse’s ''Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle'' (in the 8th volume, from 1872). It described the ''flâneur'' in ambivalent terms, equal parts curiosity and laziness and presented a taxonomy of ''flânerie''—''flâneurs'' of the boulevards, of parks, of the arcades, of cafés, mindless ''flâneurs'' and intelligent ''flâneurs''.〔"(''Grand dictionnaire universel'' )", vol. 8, v. ''flâneur'' and ''flânerie''.〕 By then, the term had already developed a rich set of associations. Sainte-Beuve wrote that to ''flâne'' "is the very opposite of doing nothing".〔 Honoré de Balzac described ''flânerie'' as "the gastronomy of the eye".〔 Anaïs Bazin wrote that "the only, the true sovereign of Paris is the ''flâneur''".〔 Victor Fournel, in ''Ce qu’on voit dans les rues de Paris'' (''What One Sees in the Streets of Paris'', 1867), devoted a chapter to "the art of ''flânerie''". For Fournel, there was nothing lazy in ''flânerie''. It was, rather, a way of understanding the rich variety of the city landscape. It was a moving photograph (“un daguerréotype mobile et passioné”) of urban experience.〔Victor Fournel, ''(Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris, )'' p. 268.〕 In the 1860s, in the midst of the rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III and the Baron Haussmann, Charles Baudelaire presented a memorable portrait of the ''flâneur'' as the artist-poet of the modern metropolis: Drawing on Fournel, and on his analysis of the poetry of Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin described the ''flâneur'' as the essential figure of the modern urban spectator, an amateur detective and investigator of the city. More than this, his ''flâneur'' was a sign of the alienation of the city and of capitalism. For Benjamin, the ''flâneur'' met his demise with the triumph of consumer capitalism.〔Walter Benjamin, ''(Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism )'', Harry Zohn, trans. (London, 1983), p. 54.〕 In these texts, the ''flâneur'' was often juxtaposed to the figure of the ''badaud'', the gawker or gaper. Fournel wrote: “The ''flâneur'' must not be confused with the ''badaud''; a nuance should be observed there…. The simple ''flâneur'' is always in full possession of his individuality, whereas the individuality of the ''badaud'' disappears. It is absorbed by the outside world…which intoxicates him to the point where he forgets himself. Under the influence of the spectacle which presents itself to him, the ''badaud'' becomes an impersonal creature; he is no longer a human being, he is part of the public, of the crowd.”〔Victor Fournel, ''(Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris )'', (Paris, 1867), p. 270. See Shaya 2004.〕 In the decades since Benjamin, the ''flâneur'' has been the subject of a remarkable number of appropriations and interpretations. The figure of the ''flâneur'' has been used—among other things—to explain modern, urban experience, to explain urban spectatorship, to explain the class tensions and gender divisions of the nineteenth-century city, to describe modern alienation, to explain the sources of mass culture, to explain the postmodern spectatorial gaze.〔See, among others, Buck-Morss, 1986; Buck-Morss, 1989; Wolff, 1985; Charney and Schwartz, 1995; Tester, 1994; Ferguson, 1994; Prendergast, 1992; Feathersone, 1998; Friedberg, 1993.〕 And it has served as a source of inspiration to writers and artists. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Flâneur」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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