Working Papers - A graduate student publication of the UPenn Department of Romance Languages

 

  • David L. Pike's suggestions

    Ten essential “underground” fictions (and one essay):
    Virgil, The Aeneid, book 6.First century BCE.
    Dante Alighieri, Inferno.Early 14th century.
    Margaret Cavendish.The Blazing World.1666.
    Victor Hugo.Les Misérables.1862.Esp. part 5, books 2-3.
    Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. 1864.
    Wells, H. G.The Time Machine, 1895.
    Kafka, Franz.“The Burrow.”1923-24.
    Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. 1937.
    Ellison, Ralph.Invisible Man.1952.
    Pynchon, Thomas.V.1963.Primary source of the alligators in the sewers myth in New York.
    Murakami, Haruki.Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. 1991.
    Ten essential “underground” films:
    Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang)
    The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
    Them! (1954, Gordon Douglas)
    Kanal (1957, Andrzej Wajda)
    La Jetée (1962, Chris Marker)
    The Warriors (1979, Walter Hill)
    Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)
    Moëbius (1996, Gustavo Mosquera)
    Dark Days (2000, Mark Singer)
    Kontroll (2003, Nimród Antall)
    Some “underground” art online:
    1. Art Crimes includes graffiti art from around the world
    2. Wayne Barrar’s photographs document what he terms “commodified subterra”
    3. William Blake’s illustrations of the Inferno on the National Gallery of Victoria’s web page
    4. Digital Dante’s Image Collections includes illustrations of Inferno by Botticelli, Doré, and Dali
    5. Andreas Magdanz’s photographs document the Dienststelle Marienthal, an 83,000 m2 shelter built for the Bonn government in a railway tunnel between 1960 and 1972
    6. A selection of Henry Moore’s sketches of tube shelterers during the Battle of Britain, at the Tate
    7. One of Mark Rothko’s subway pictures of the 1930s
    Some general underground links:
    • The London Underground in Film and Television provides an annotated and impressively comprehensive list of the countless media appearances of the Tube (I have not yet found an equivalent resource for any other city)
    • Les Catacombes de Paris dans la Bande Dessinée—unique among the numerous sites devoted by cataphiles to subterranean Paris, this site offers an annotated and illustrated list of appearances of the Catacombs of Paris in comics.
    • The ‘zine Infiltration specializes in “going places you’re not supposed to go”—its webpage has links to pages on literally and metaphorically underground spaces the world over.
    • Subterranea Britannica: “the study & investigation of all man-made and man used underground spaces”
    • www.souterrains.org/: a global guide to human made subterranean structures sponsored by the Union Internationale de Spéléologie