Description

At the start of the 18th century, literary "characters" referred as much to letters and typefaces as it did to persons in books. However, this text shows how, by the 19th century, characters in books became identified with the reader, as friends with whom they empathized. The story of this shift in meaning is usually told in terms of the "rise of the individual", but this text proposes an alternative solution. Elaborating a "pragmatics of character" it shows how readers used transactions with characters to accommodate themselves to newly-commmercialized social relations. Ranging from Defoe and Smollett to Burney and Austen, this account should interest those with a concern for the inner workings of consumer culture and the history of emotions.

The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning

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Paperback / softback by Deidre Shauna Lynch

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Short Description:

At the start of the 18th century, literary "characters" referred as much to letters and typefaces as it did to... Read more

    Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
    Publication Date: 13/05/1998
    ISBN13: 9780226498201, 978-0226498201
    ISBN10: 0226498204

    Number of Pages: 332

    Non Fiction , ELT & Literary Studies , Education

    Description

    At the start of the 18th century, literary "characters" referred as much to letters and typefaces as it did to persons in books. However, this text shows how, by the 19th century, characters in books became identified with the reader, as friends with whom they empathized. The story of this shift in meaning is usually told in terms of the "rise of the individual", but this text proposes an alternative solution. Elaborating a "pragmatics of character" it shows how readers used transactions with characters to accommodate themselves to newly-commmercialized social relations. Ranging from Defoe and Smollett to Burney and Austen, this account should interest those with a concern for the inner workings of consumer culture and the history of emotions.

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