Consumerism and Prestige: The Materiality of Literature in the Modern Age

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This anthology explores the relationships and interdependencies between literary production and distinctions of taste by examining how the material aspects of literary texts, such as the cover, binding, typography and paper stock, reflect or even determine their cultural status. In many cases, for example, the distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow taste have little to do with the content of the texts themselves, as books often function as markers of socioeconomic status, like clothing or home dcor. One might even go so far as to say that the concept of literary taste is more closely related to fashion sense than critical judgment. The anthology seeks to address this claim by examining how the tensions between consumerism and prestige reflect fundamental historical changes with regard to the development of technology, literacy and social power.

Reviews

A valuable international contribution to understanding how the materiality of book publishing is closely tied to social systems of taste and prestige. Professor Andrew Piper, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, McGill University, Canada.

Ranging widely across historical periods, genres, and nationalities, the essays collected in Consumerism and Prestige draw nuanced, materialist connections between the circumstances of textual production and the cultural construction of prestige as both a marketing and aesthetic category. Book historians and other scholars focused on materialist literary history will find much of interest in this volume. John Young, Professor of English, Marshall University, USA.

The incisive essays in Consumerism and Prestige engage the material aspects of modern literary culture (including the highbrow, the lowbrow and everything in between) as highly suggestive markers of social status. Thoroughly transnational in scope and style, this volume provides fresh methodological impulses for material text studies and comparative literature. Dr. Alexander Starre, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Department of Culture, Freie Universitt Berlin.

Author Bio

Anthony Enns is an associate professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University.

Bernhard Metz is an associate director of the SNF-funded project Online-Edition der Rezensionen und Briefe Albrecht von Hallers at the University of Bern.