Literature's social lives : a socio-institutional history of literary value /
"This book combines literary studies and cultural sociology to propose a new value theory and sketch a socio-institutional history of US and Anglophone literary culture from 1800 to the present. Defining institutions as stabilized social ties that connect people and things in hierarchical relat...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2025]
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| Series: | Oxford studies in American literary history.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "This book combines literary studies and cultural sociology to propose a new value theory and sketch a socio-institutional history of US and Anglophone literary culture from 1800 to the present. Defining institutions as stabilized social ties that connect people and things in hierarchical relationships, I develop a critical lexicon for an ethnography of literary value that complements our more habitual perspectives as critics or literary historians. Looking at literary authority on the public square, I show how as readers we often participate in two value systems at the same time, one rooted in the everyday (where we behave as consumers suiting private purposes), the other in a sort of moral or charismatic economy that appeals to us from outside of our individual selves and purposive routines. My historical thesis is that the rising turnover of books between 1800 and 2000 extended the commercial literary marketplace, but by inverse subsidy also stabilized literature's market-sheltered support systems. Today's spaces of high literary ambition seem beset not just by market bottom lines but also by scholastic corps effects that emerge with the rise of academic patronage and the recent gentrification of the book."-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Physical Description: | xvi, 339 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780197815113 0197815111 |