Title: Paperwork
First published: 2005
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.
Subjects: History, History and criticism, Literature publishing, Economics in literature, Capitalism and literature, Paper money, Economics and literature, Mass media, English fiction, Money in literature, American fiction, English fiction, history and criticism, 19th century, American fiction, history and criticism, 19th century
Places: English-speaking countries
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PR868.C25 M37 2005