The Self and It - Novel Objects in Eighteenth-Century England (Hardcover)

Objects we traditionally regard as "mere" imitations of the human--dolls, automata, puppets--proliferated in eighteenth-century England's rapidly expanding market culture. During the same period, there arose a literary genre called "the novel" that turned the experience of life into a narrated object of psychological plausibility. Park makes a bold intervention in histories of the rise of the novel by arguing that the material objects abounding in eighteenth-century England's consumer markets worked in conjunction with the novel, itself a commodity fetish, as vital tools for fashioning the modern self. As it constructs a history for the psychology of objects, "The Self and It" revises a story that others have viewed as originating later: in an age of Enlightenment, things have the power to move, affect people's lives, and most of all, enable a fictional genre of selfhood. The book demonstrates just how much the modern psyche--and its thrilling projections of "artificial life"--derive from the formation of the early novel, and the reciprocal activity between made things and invented identities that underlie it.

General

Imprint:	Stanford University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	October 2009
First published:	2010
Authors:	Julie Park
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth / Cloth
Pages:	312
ISBN-13:	978-0-8047-5696-9
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries
LSN:	0-8047-5696-1
Barcode:	9780804756969

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