LITERATURE, COMMERCE, AND THE SPECTACLE OF MODERNITY, 1750-1800 by Paul Keen ( 9781139061278 )

Item Details

Title:

LITERATURE, COMMERCE, AND THE SPECTACLE OF MODERNITY, 1750-1800

By:

Format:

Electronic book text

List price:	£102.00
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ISBN 10:

1139061275

ISBN 13:

9781139061278

Publisher:

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

5 March, 2012

Series:

Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 92

Description:

This book explores the ways that authors responded to fundamental questions about literature during an age of accelerating change.

Synopsis:

Paul Keen explores how a consumer revolution which reached its peak in the second half of the eighteenth century shaped debates about the role of literature in a polite modern nation, and tells the story of the resourcefulness with which many writers responded to these pressures. From dream reveries which mocked their own entrepreneurial commitments, such as Oliver Goldsmith's account of selling his work at a 'Fashion Fair' on the frozen Thames, to the Microcosm's mock plan to establish 'a licensed warehouse for wit', writers insistently tied their literary achievements to a sophisticated understanding of the uncertain complexities of a modern transactional society. This book combines a new understanding of late eighteenth-century literature with the materialist and sociological imperatives of book history and theoretically inflected approaches to cultural history.

Illustrations:

8 b/w illus.

Publication:

Imprint:

Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)

Returns:

Non-returnable

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