Paperwork : fiction and mass mediacy in the Paper Age / Kevin McLaughlin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McLaughlin, Kevin, 1959-

Series:

Critical authors & issues.

Critical authors & issues

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English fiction.

Capitalism and literature--English-speaking countries--History--19th century.

Capitalism and literature.

Literature publishing--English-speaking countries--History--19th century.

Literature publishing.

Mass media--English-speaking countries--History--19th century.

Mass media.

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

American fiction.

Economics and literature--English-speaking countries.

Economics and literature.

Paper money--English-speaking countries.

Paper money.

Economics in literature.

Money in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (193 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"The Paper Age" is the phrase coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1837 to describe the monetary and literary inflation of the French Revolution-an age of mass-produced "Bank-paper" and "Book-paper." Carlyle's phrase is suggestive because it points to the particular substance-paper-that provides the basis for reflection on the mass media in much popular fiction appearing around the time of his historical essay. Rather than becoming a metaphor, however, paper in some of this fiction seems to display the more complex and elusive character of what Walter Benjamin evocatively calls "the decline of the aura." The critical perspective elaborated by Benjamin serves as the point of departure for the readings of paper proposed in Paperwork. Kevin McLaughlin argues for a literary-critical approach to the impact of the mass media on literature through a series of detailed interpretations of paper in fiction by Poe, Stevenson, Melville, Dickens, and Hardy. In this fiction, he argues, paper dramatizes the "withdrawal," as Benjamin puts it, of the "here and now" of the traditional work of art into the dispersing or distracting movement of the mass media. Paperwork seeks to challenge traditional concepts of medium and message that continue to inform studies of print culture and the mass media especially in the wake of industrialized production in the early nineteenth century. It breaks new ground in the exploration of the difference between mass culture and literature and will appeal to cultural historians and literary critics alike.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Frequently Cited Texts

Introduction: Apparitions of Paper

Chapter 1 Distraction in America: Paper, Money, Poe

Chapter 2 Off the Map: Stevenson's Polynesian Fiction

Chapter 3 Transatlantic Connections: "Paper Language" in Melville

Chapter 4 The Paper State: Collective Breakdown in Dickens's Bleak House

Chapter 5 Pretending to Read: Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge

Afterword: The Novel Collective

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [161]-176) and index.

ISBN:

9786613211873

9781283211871

1283211874

9780812202779

0812202775

OCLC:

759158197