Necessary luxuries books, literature, and the culture of consumption in Germany, 1770/1815 Erlin, Matt creator author. JSTOR (Organization) text bibliography Electronic books. History. nyu 2014 monographic eng remote 1 online resource. The consumer revolution of the eighteenth century brought new and exotic commodities to Europe from abroad--coffee, tea, spices, and new textiles to name a few. Yet one of the most widely distributed luxury commodities in the period was not new at all, and was produced locally: the book. In Necessary Luxuries, Matt Erlin considers books and the culture around books during this period, focusing specifically on Germany where literature, and the fine arts in general, were the subject of soul-searching debates over the legitimacy of luxury in the modern world. Building on recent work done in the fields of consumption studies as well as the New Economic Criticism, Erlin combines intellectual-historical chapters (on luxury as a concept, luxury editions, and concerns about addictive reading) with contextualized close readings of novels by Campe, Wieland, Moritz, Novalis, and Goethe. As he demonstrates, artists in this period were deeply concerned with their status as luxury producers. The rhetorical strategies they developed to justify their activities evolved in dialogue with more general discussions regarding new forms of discretionary consumption. By emphasizing the fragile legitimacy of the fine arts in the period, Necessary Luxuries offers a fresh perspective on the broader trajectory of German literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, recasting the entire period in terms of a dynamic unity, rather than simply as a series of literary trends and countertrends. Introduction: Guilty pleasures -- The conceptual landscape of luxury in Germany -- Thinking about luxury editions in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany -- The appetite for reading around 1800 -- The enlightenment novel as artifact: J.H. Campe's Robinson der Jüngere and C.M. Wieland's Der goldne Spiegel -- Karl Philipp Moritz and the system of needs -- Products of the imagination: mining, luxury, and the Romantic artist in Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen -- Symbolic economies in Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften -- Conclusion: Useful subjects? Matt Erlin. Includes bibliographical references and index. e-gx--- Books and reading Germany History 18th century Books and reading Germany History 19th century Germany Intellectual life 18th century Germany Intellectual life 19th century LITERARY CRITICISM Books & Reading LITERARY CRITICISM European German Books and reading Intellectual life Germany Buch Lesen Literatur Rezeption Geistesleben Literaturproduktion Deutschland 1700-1899 fast Z1003.5.G4 E73 2014eb 028/.9094309033 020 830 Necessary luxuries Erlin, Matt. (DLC) 2014010515 (OCoLC)863200140 Signale (Ithaca, N.Y.) 9780801470431 0801470439 9780801453045 0801453046 9780801479403 0801479401 22573/ctt592xv2 JSTOR http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt5hh26b N$T 140616 20260728172430.8 in00004018296 eng