[[quote]] Flâneur is a French [[noun]] referring to a [[person]], literally meaning ‘stroller’, ‘lounger’, ‘saunterer’, or ‘loafer’, but with some nuanced additional meanings. Flânerie is the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations.
[[quote]] 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 (even modernist) experience.
[[quote]] From his [[Marxist]] standpoint, Benjamin describes the flâneur as a product of modern life and the Industrial [[Revolution]] without precedent, a parallel to the advent of the tourist. His flâneur is an uninvolved but highly perceptive bourgeois dilettante. Benjamin became his own prime example, making social and aesthetic observations during long walks through Paris. Even the title of his unfinished [[Arcades]] Project comes from his affection for covered shopping streets.