Writing in parts : imitation and exchange in nineteenth-century literature / Kevin McLaughlin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McLaughlin, Kevin, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

French fiction.

Serialized fiction--France--History and criticism.

Serialized fiction.

Literature publishing--England--History--19th century.

Literature publishing.

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Literature publishing--France--History--19th century.

Serialized fiction--England--History and criticism.

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850. Comédie humaine.

Balzac, Honoré de.

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Pickwick papers.

Dickens, Charles.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Imitation in literature.

History.

England.

France.

Physical Description:

186 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [1995]

Summary:

Proposing a new interpretation of literature and mass culture in nineteenth-century Europe, this work focuses on works by Marx, Balzac, Dickens, Adorno, and Benjamin to explore in them a complex "mimetic" disposition toward commodification in the realm of culture. The aim of the book is twofold: to explicate in the work of Balzac and Dickens subtle and profoundly ambivalent attitudes toward the rapidly expanding mass culture of the 1830's in France and England, and to identify through this reading of the novelists a common mimetic element that has eluded a certain dialectical approach to art's overcoming of mass culture - an approach best exemplified in Horkheimer and Adorno's influential essay on the "culture industry".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [169]-181) and index.

ISBN:

0804724113

OCLC:

31376114