STREET POETRY AND SOCIO-POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY WESTERN EUROPE

This project aims to investigate street poetry as an intermedial artistic
literary genre, and to understand its socio-political functions in
contemporary Western Europe. The research will analyse street
poetry in Rome, Brussels and London, three cities chosen as case
studies because of their geographical position, current socio-political
context, and particular relationship with street poetry. This project
wants to determine how the main themes addressed by this literary
genre such as capitalism, consumerism, sexism and modern
communication are expressed, specifically in an urban context.
Indeed, the socio-political message of street poetry is not only
conveyed by the content of the compositions, but also by the legal or
non-legal exposition in public urban spaces. In fact, the project aims
at casting light on this practice by carrying out a literary, linguistic and
geo-spatial analysis of the selected corpus. Firstly, this fourfold
analysis is conducted through an intermedial framework, and,
secondly, examined from a socio-political analytical angle.
Methodologically, I will draw from theories related to intermediality,
stylistics, comparative literature, and sociology of literature, alongside
tools for digital humanities.