Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning

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

Lynch, Deidre Shauna

Paperback

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 0226498204
ISBN13: 9780226498201
Publisher: Univ Of Chicago Pr
Published: May 13 1998
Pages: 332
Weight: 1.02
Height: 0.79 Width: 6.09 Depth: 9.06
Language: English
At the start of the eighteenth century, talk of literary characters referred as much to letters and typefaces as it did to persons in books. Yet by the nineteenth century, characters had become the equals of their readers, friends with whom readers might spend time and empathize.

Although the story of this shift is usually told in terms of the rise of the individual, Deidre Shauna Lynch proposes an ingenious alternative interpretation. Elaborating a pragmatics of character, Lynch shows how readers used transactions with characters to accommodate themselves to newly commercialized social relations. Searching for the inner meanings of characters allowed readers both to plumb their own inwardness and to distinguish themselves from others. In a culture of mass consumption, argues Lynch, possessing a belief in the inexpressible interior life of a character rendered one's property truly private.

Ranging from Defoe and Smollett to Burney and Austen, Lynch's account will interest students of the novel, literary historians, and anyone concerned with the inner workings of consumer culture and the history of emotions.

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All