flâneur

Flânerie: The Art of Aimless Strolling

samwoolfe.com · 2,001 words · saved by 1 readers

Strolling aimlessly – instead of having set routes and set sites to see – is something I’ve always enjoyed doing, especially in big or new cities. I discovered that there was a French term for this aimless wandering, considered to be a kind of art. And that’s flânerie, while the person who engages in this…

Strolling aimlessly – instead of having set routes and set sites to see – is something I’ve always enjoyed doing, especially in big or new cities. I discovered that there was a French term for this aimless wandering, considered to be a kind of art. And that’s flânerie , while the person who engages in this pastime is called a flâneur , a figure who is emblematic of nineteenth-century French literary culture. These terms are derived from the Old Norse verb flana , which means “to wander with no purpose”. The flâneur is meant to be an acute observer of society. Flânerie is not frivolous, pointle

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