Writing in parts
Subtitle: imitation and exchange in nineteenth-century literature
By: Kevin McLaughlin.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 186
Subjects: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850. -- Comédie humaine.; Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.; French fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Serialized fiction -- France -- History and criticism.; Literature publishing -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Literature publishing -- France -- History -- 19th century.; Serialized fiction -- Great Britain -- History and criticism.; Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) -- History -- 19th century.; Imitation in literature.
Description: Proposing a new interpretation of literature and mass culture in nineteenth-century Europe, this work focuses on works by Marx, Balzac, Dickens, Adorno, and Benjamin to explore in them a complex "mimetic" disposition toward commodification in the realm of culture.

The aim of the book is twofold: to explicate in the work of Balzac and Dickens subtle and profoundly ambivalent attitudes toward the rapidly expanding mass culture of the 1830's in France and England, and to identify through this reading of the novelists a common mimetic element that has eluded a certain dialectical approach to art's overcoming of mass culture - an approach best exemplified in Horkheimer and Adorno's influential essay on the "culture industry."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-181) and index.