Title: Writing in parts
First published: 1995
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."
Subjects: History and criticism, History, Serialized fiction, Literature publishing, Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.), Imitation in literature, English fiction, Comédie humaine, French fiction, Dickens, charles, 1812-1870, Balzac, honore de, 1799-1850, French fiction, history and criticism, English fiction, history and criticism, 19th century
Places: Great Britain, France
People: Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PQ653 .M4 1995