Paperwork
Subtitle: fiction and mass mediacy in the Paper Age
By: Kevin McLaughlin.
Series: Critical authors & issues
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 181
Subjects: English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Capitalism and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 19th century.; Literature publishing -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 19th century.; Mass media -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 19th century.; American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Economics and literature -- English-speaking countries.; Paper money -- English-speaking countries.; Economics in literature.; Money in literature.
Description: "Kevin McLaughlin argues for a literary-critical approach to the impact of the mass media on literature through a series of detailed interpretations of paper in fiction by Poe, Stevenson, Melville, Dickens, and Hardy. In this fiction, he argues, paper dramatizes the "withdrawal," as Benjamin puts it, of the "here and now" of the traditional work of art into the dispersing or distracting movement of the mass media. Paperwork seeks to challenge traditional concepts of medium and message that continue to inform studies of print culture and the mass media especially in the wake of industrialized production in the early nineteenth century.

It breaks new ground in the exploration of the difference between mass culture and literature and will appeal to cultural historians and literary critics alike."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [161]-176) and index.