Benjamin's Literary History of Attention: Between Reception and Production

Paragraph ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-291
Author(s):  
Carolin Duttlinger
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Mass

This article argues that attention and distraction form a central concern of Benjamin's writings on literature. Individually and in conjunction, they underpin processes of textual production and reception, yet their relationship is fluid and subject to historical change. In this respect, Benjamin's exploration of the interplay of attention and distraction in writers such as Leskov, Baudelaire and Brecht also leads to more general reflections about the social, cultural and psychological shifts brought about by industrialization and modern mass culture. Benjamin's writings on literature trace developments which he also explores in relation to film. And echoes of his ‘literary history of attention’ can also be found in both his own critical approach and his self-reflexive comments on the process of writing.

scholarly journals An Early Modern Mass Medium: The Adventures of Cartouche in Dutch Penny Prints (1700–1900)

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-47
Author(s):  
Jeroen Salman
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Mass Medium ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Publication History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Common Notion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Mass

This article demonstrates the social and cultural significance of eighteenth and nineteenth century Dutch penny prints – one of the first mass media in European history. By using a combination of media and cultural historical approaches (Henry Jenkins, John Fiske) and an anthropological perspective (Eric Hobsbawm) it asserts that, contrary to common notion, penny prints were not just part of a commercialized, conformist mass culture, but existed as a form of social resistance and protest as well. This new insight is based on the analysis of the adaption and publication history of the eighteenth-century French criminal hero Louis Dominique de Cartouche, the equivalent of the English highwayman. Give the multiple, multilingual representations of this narrative – in pamphlets, songs, biographies, prints, paintings and movies – the pervasiveness of Cartouche can be regarded as a remarkable cultural phenomenon. This interdisciplinary and long-term analysis also demonstrates that popularization processes were more dynamic and multifaceted than often perceived. In the case of penny prints about Cartouche more conformist periods alternated with more rebellious periods.

PRINT CULTURE AND ITS PUBLICS: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF BOOKSTORES IN TEHRAN, 1900–1950

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Afshin Marashi
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Book Trade ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

AbstractThis article investigates the evolution of print culture and commerce in Tehran during the first half of the 20th century. The first section examines technological changes that facilitated the commercialization of texts and then details the history of early print entrepreneurs in the Tehran bazaar. The second section examines the expansion of the book trade between the 1920s and 1940s, tracing the emergence of modern bookstores in a rapidly changing Tehran. I argue that patterns of change in print commerce between 1900 and 1950 contributed to the emergence of mass culture by midcentury. This new mass culture involved the social and political empowerment of a diversity of new reading publics in the city, and enabled the emergence of new forms of popular politics.

What Is and to What End Does One Study the History of East German Literature?

PMLA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (3) ◽  
pp. 594-609
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Emmerich ◽  
Nicole G. Burgoyne ◽  
Andrew B. B. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
The Right

East german literary history is a case study of how political and cultural institutions interact. the state's cultural regime mo-nopolized the right to publish within its borders and demanded that the nation's new art describe contemporary life or its precedents. Even authors seen in the West as dissidents understood themselves, more often than not, as pursuing that goal and the broader aims of socialism with their work. During the lifespan of the German Democratic Republic, this political albatross weighed on all literary scholarship. Even now, whatever their feelings toward the socialist state, scholars, critics, and readers are bound to approach a text from East Germany as an artifact of its political culture—and rightly, because the political sphere encroached heavily on the artistic. But since German unification, the rise and fall in the stock of so many East German authors has directly resulted from political revelations, raising a number of troubling questions. Though historical distance seemed to have sprung up as abruptly as the Berlin Wall had come down, to what extent does scholarship from the German Democratic Republic represent only a heightened case of what is always true of literary history— namely, that political motivation colors critical evaluation? Is it possible to consider a work of literature with no recourse to the social and political circumstances under which it was written? And would it even be desirable to do so?

scholarly journals Procesos da historiografía literaria galega Para un debate crítico

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Casas
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
History Of ◽  
Galician Literature ◽  
The 19Th Century

Galician literary historiography shows links and ruptures that refer to the cultural history of Galicia itself and to the sequence of historical events that have delineated the social, economic and political development of the country since the 19th century. These coordinates comprise a series of processes, including the elaboration and propagation of ideologies aimed at achieving a way out of political subalternity and oriented towards the horizon of national emancipation. Those events and these processes also marked the connection of Galicia with modernity and the dynamics of historical change. As a result of the above, this book analyses critically the institutionalization processes of the history of Galician literature – with special emphasis on historiographic models such as that of Said Armesto, Carvalho Calero, Méndez Ferrín and others – and indicates the need to undertake a productive methodological innovation of the discipline in heuristic, organic and discursive terms. It further argues that this update should pay attention to substantive theoretical debates, not exclusively of specific cultural coordinates, such as Galician ones or any others that could be considered. Among these, the cooperation between history and sociology, the intellection of literary facts as historical facts, the review of the link between literary history and nation, the public uses of literary history, and the inquiry of discursive choices that promote a less self-indulgent and predictable historiography. This essentially involved a challenge, that of permanent dialogue with some of the most powerful critical reinterpretations of the Galician historiographic tradition and with alternative models constituted from feminist thought, postcolonial theories, the sociology of the literary field or the systemic theories of culture, as well as with the contributions made from a post-national understanding of the literary phenomenon.

‘Two men, so dissimilar’: Class, Marriage and Masculinity in George Moore’s Albert Nobbs (1918) and Simone Benmussa’s The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs (1977)

2018 ◽  
pp. 37-63
Author(s):  
Rachel Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Feminist Theatre ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Fantasy ◽  
Second Wave

This chapter examines a critically overlooked literary fiction by an Irish writer whose legacy has tended to be overshadowed by the modernist generation which succeeded him. George Moore’s Albert Nobbs depicts the lives of not one but two female-bodied men working in a Dublin hotel in the 1860s. It provides an alternative origin for a literary history of transgender representation, with an emphasis on lived experience and social reality rather than the historical fantasy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, published ten years later. This chapter aims to articulate the ‘transgender capacity’ (David Getsy, 2014) of Moore’s novella, exploring the insights it offers into the social and economic functions of gender. Simone Benmussa’s 1977 stage adaptation, The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, has been canonised as a classic of feminist theatre; reflection on its critical reception reveals the ways in which transgender motifs have been interpreted in Second Wave feminist contexts.

scholarly journals ‘This strange process of typing on a glowing glass screen’: An Interview with Matthew Kirschenbaum

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-275
Author(s):  
Manuel Portela
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Hands On ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Archival Work ◽  
And Control

Track Changes, by Matthew Kirschenbaum, tells the early history of word processing, roughly situated between 1964—when the IBM Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter (MT/ST) was advertised as a word processing system for offices—and 1984—when the Apple Macintosh generalized the graphical user interface in personal computers. The history of word processing both as technological process and mode of textual production is deeply entangled with the changes in the technologies of writing as they reflect and contribute to efficiency and control in increasingly bureaucratic processes of social administration and organization. The literary history of word processing can be situated within this general computerization of the modes of production of writing. Kirschenbaum’s methods combine archival work in special collections and writers’ archives, oral interviews with writers and engineers, and hands-on descriptions of historical word processing machines. Track Changes is the subject of this interview.

scholarly journals Hallo? Nedslag i telefonens litteraturhistorie

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (72) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore Rye Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crying Of Lot 49

Tore Rye Andersen: “Hello?: Episodes in the Literary History of the Telephone”Through analyses of three American novels – Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010) – this article traces the major impact that the invention of the telephone has had on both society and the culture that reflects it. The medium of the telephone has thoroughly restructured the social space that is one of literature’s most important topics, and it has provided authors with new narrative strategies, new metaphors, new topics and new props, some of which are discussed in the article. The three analyses focus on different stages in the technological development of the telephone, and together they demonstrate how changes in the medium of the telephone also result in changed possibilities for literature.

scholarly journals Why ABC Matters: Lexicography and Literary History

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-527
Author(s):  
Jon Helgason
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Social ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
History Of

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, I wish to discuss the origins of The Swedish Academy Dictionary against the backdrop of the social and cultural history of lexicography in 18th and 19th century Europe. Second, to consider material aspects of lexicography – the dictionary as interface – in light of German media scientist Friedrich Kittler’s “media materialism”. Ultimately, both purposes intend to describe how letters and writing have been constructed and arranged through-out the course of history. In Kittler’s view, “the intimization of literature”, that took place during second half of the 18th century, brought about a fundamental change in the way language and text were perceived. However, parallel to this development an institutionalization and disciplining of language and literature took place. The rise of modern society, the nation state, print capitalism and modern science in 18th century Europe necessitated (and were furthered by) a disciplining of language and literature. This era was for these reasons a golden age for lexicographers and scholars whose work focused on the vernacular. In this article the rise of the alphabetically ordered dictionary and the corresponding downfall of the topical dictionary that occurred around 1700 is regarded as a technological threshold. This development is interesting not only within the field of history of lexicography, but arguably also, since information and thought are connected to the basic principles of mediality, this development has bearings on the epistemo-logical revolution of the 18th century witnessed in, among other things, Enlightenment thought and literature.

scholarly journals In Memory of Herzen. On the Margins of the Magazine “Russkoye Bogatstvo”

Literary Fact ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 312-325
Author(s):  
Mikhail V. Stroganov
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Biographies ◽  
The 19Th Century

The paper examines the history of the phrase “in memory of Herzen”, which became the title of a number of journalistic and poetic works. The origin of this formula and the reasons for its transfer from the days of memory (anniversaries of death) to the birthdays of A.I. Herzen are found out. The study of this story allows determining the historical significance of the article by the founder of this tradition, A.G. Gornfeld, whose legacy has not yet received an adequate assessment in the literary history. In the course of the study, the author clarifies and refines the literary biographies of other authors who also used this formula: the practically unknown “populist” poet S. Ivanov-Raikov and the “social democratic” publicist N.N. Kuzmin. The reconstruction allows seeing the real role of the article “In Memory of Herzen” by V.I. Ulyanov-Lenin, the value of which in the 1940 –1970s was unlawfully exaggerated, as a result of which the historical perspective in the study of many literary phenomena and, first of all, the assessment of A.I. Herzen’s activities were distorted. All this leads to an adequate interpretation of N. Korzhavin's poem dedicated to the topic, which for many generations has been the ideological key to describing the place of A.I. Herzen in the social and literary movement of the 19th century. At the end of the paper, it is concluded that the historical, cultural and literary heritage acquires significance only in the context of modernity, but politics and journalism seek to unfold the legacy of the past in their specific pragmatic interests, and even history seeks to see a lesson in the past, although addressing it not to a particular group of people, but to the modernity as a whole. Literature does not have such pragmatic interests, but it attracts modern human with the charm of the personality of past centuries, and that’s what makes its irreplaceable significance.

Natura în romanul românesc (1845-1947)

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 55-62
Author(s):  
Alex Ciorogar ◽  
Jessica Brenda Codină ◽  
Alex Văsieș ◽  
Vlad Pojoga ◽  
Ștefan Baghiu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Interactive Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

A post-anthropocentric epistemological assemblage becomes indispensable in the investigation of the ecology of the Romanian novel. We examine the interactive relationship of various dynamic systems, such as 1) the evolution of the Romanian novel, 2) the modes of representation of the environment, and 3) the social-political history of the autochthonous space. Using a wide range of methodological perspectives, this paper also examines the relationship between literature and the Earth sciences, thus envisioning a new type of literary history where the Romanian novel should be thought as existing within hyper-objects, such as the climate, agriculture, wilderness, pollution, biosphere, cultural politics, capitalism, or geology. The article finally addresses the issue of zoopoetics both as an object of study in the MDRR digital archive (1845-1947) and as a reading strategy, thus, favoring the relationship between animality and narrativity.

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