Title: The bourgeois : between history and literature /
Authors: Moretti, Franco, 1950-
Year: 2013
Subjects: Middle class in literature.; Social values in literature.
Abstract: "The bourgeois ... Not so long ago, this notion seemed indispensable to social analysis; these days, one might go years without hearing it mentioned. Capitalism is more powerful than ever, but its human embodiment seems to have vanished. 'I am a member of the bourgeois class, feel myself to be such, and have been brought up on its opinions and ideals,' wrote Max Weber, in 1895. Who could repeat these words today? Bourgeois 'opinions and ideals' -- what are they?" Thus begins Franco Moretti's study of the bourgeois in modern European literature -- a major new analysis of the once-dominant culture and its literary decline and fall. Moretti's gallery of individual portraits is entwined with the analysis of specific keywords -- "useful" and "earnest," "efficiency," "influence," "comfort," "roba"-- and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. From the "working master" of the opening chapter, through the seriousness of nineteenth-century novels, the conservative hegemony of Victorian Britain, the "national malformations" of the Southern and Eastern periphery, and the radical self-critique of Ibsen's twelve-play cycle, the book charts the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and for its current irrelevance. -- Publisher's website.
Contents: Introduction: Concepts and contradictions. 'I am a member of the bourgeois class' ; Dissonances ; Bourgeoisie, middle class ; Between history and literature ; Abstract hero ; Prose and keywords: preliminary remarks ; 'The bourgeois is lost...'. -- A working master. Adventure, enterprise, Fortuna ; 'This will testify for me that I was not idle' ; Keywords I: 'Useful' ; Keywords II: 'Efficiency' ; Keywords III: 'Comfort' ; Prose I: 'The rhythm of continuity' ; Prose II: 'We have discovered the productivity of the spirit...'. -- Serious century. Keywords IV: 'Serious' ; Fillers ; Rationalization ; Prose III: Reality principle ; Description, conservatism, Realpolitik ; Prose IV: 'A transposition of the objective into the subjective'. -- Fog. Naked, shameless, and direct ; 'Behind the veil' ; The gothic, un déjà-là ; The gentleman ; Keywords V: 'Influence' ; Prose V: Victorian adjectives ; Keywords VI: 'Earnest' ; 'Who loves not knowledge?' ; Prose VI: Fog. -- 'National malformations': Metamorphoses in the semi-periphery. Balzac, Machado, and money ; Keywords VII: 'Roba' ; Persistence of the Old Regime I: The doll ; Persistence of the Old Regime II: Torquemada ; 'There's arithmetic for you!'. -- Ibsen and the spirit of capitalism. The grey area ; 'Signs against signs' ; Bourgeois prose, capitalist poetry.