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The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature

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The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature

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Overview

"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?

Thus begins Franco Moretti’s study of the bourgeois in modern European literature, where a gallery of individual portraits is entwined around the analysis of specific keywords – such as ‘useful’ and ‘earnest’, ‘efficiency’, ‘influence’, ‘comfort’, ‘roba’ – and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. The book charts the rise and fall of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical
weakness, and searches for the seeds of its failures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781683057
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	06/04/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	228
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Franco Moretti teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of Signs Taken for Wonders, The Way of the World and Modern Epic, all from Verso.

Note on Sources xi

Introduction: Concepts and Contradictions

1 'I am a member of the bourgeois class' 1

2 Dissonances 4

3 Bourgeoisie, middle class 6

4 Between history and literature 12

5 Abstract hero 15

6 Prose and keywords: preliminary remarks 17

7 'The bourgeois is lost…' 19

I A Working Master

1 Adventure, enterprise, Fortuna 25

2 'This will testify for me that I was not idle' 29

3 Keywords I: 'Useful' 35

4 Keywords II: 'Efficiency' 39

5 Keywords III: 'Comfort' 44

6 Prose I: 'The rhythm of continuity' 51

7 Prose II: 'We have discovered the productivity of the spirit…' 58

II Serious Century

1 Keywords IV: 'Serious' 67

2 Fillers 74

3 Rationalization 79

4 Prose III: Reality principle 83

5 Description, conservatism, Realpolitik 89

6 Prose IV: 'A transposition of the objective into the subjective' 94

III Fog

1 Naked, shameless, and direct 101

2 'Behind the veil' 108

3 The Gothic, un déjà-là 112

4 The gentleman 116

5 Keywords V: 'Influence' 120

6 Prose V: Victorian adjectives 125

7 Keywords VI: 'Earnest' 131

8 'Who loves not Knowledge?' 135

9 Prose VI: Fog 141

IV 'National Malformations': Metamorphoses in the Semi-Periphery

1 Balzac, Machado, and money 145

2 Keywords VII: 'Roba' 149

3 Persistence of the Old Regime I: The Doll 156

4 Persistence of the Old Regime II: Torquemada 160

5 'There's arithmetic for you!' 164

V Ibsen and the Spirit of Capitalism

1 The grey area 169

2 'Signs against signs' 174

3 Bourgeois prose, capitalist poetry 179

Illustration Credits 189

Index 191

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Editorial Reviews

First named in the 11th century, the bourgeois class established a dominant presence in world literature starting in the 1700s, as this brief but incisive critical study indicates. Starting with Robinson Crusoe, Moretti shows how conservative middle-class values and their incarnation in character types began to appear in fiction and poetry, shaping the structure of narrative. Crusoe, a model of human industry and the nascent capitalist spirit, sees his island world only in terms of what is “useful” to his endeavors. Moretti dissects Defoe’s grammar and syntax, finding it consistent with the efficiency of Crusoe’s character: “Defoe’s sentences take the successful ending of an action... and turn it into the premise for another action.” Looking to Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, Madame Bovary, and other 19th-century classics, Moretti sees novels dominated by “fillers”—details of daily life that convey a sense of “regularity”—and descriptions that are increasingly “analytical, impersonal, perhaps even ‘impartial.’” Moretti buttresses his argument with observations from Weber, Lukács, Gramsci, and other theorists, and extends his study to the novels of Machado, Gáldos, Prus, and others. Moretti persuasively demonstrates that his interpretations can be applied broadly to the vast body of 18th- and 19th-century literature. (June)

Publishers Weekly

The great iconoclast of literary criticism.”—John Sutherland, Guardian

“It’s a rare literary critic who attracts so much public attention, and there’s a good reason: few are as hellbent on rethinking the way we talk about literature.”—Times Literary Supplement

“Moretti, a mythopoeic figure, generates around himself a dense network of folklore and apocrypha.”—n+1

“Moretti is already famous in bookish circles for his data-centric approach to novels, which he graphs, maps, and charts ... if his new methods catch on, they could change the way we look at literary history.”—Wired

“Distant reading might prove to be a powerful tool for studying literature.”—New York Times

From the Publisher

Moretti is already famous in bookish circles for his data-centric approach to novels, which he graphs, maps, and charts ... if his new methods catch on, they could change the way we look at literary history.

Wired

Moretti, a mythopoeic figure, generates around himself a dense network of folklore and apocrypha.

n+1

It’s a rare literary critic who attracts so much public attention, and there’s a good reason: few are as hellbent on rethinking the way we talk about literature.

Times Literary Supplement

The great iconoclast of literary criticism

John Sutherland - Guardian

Distant reading might prove to be a powerful tool for studying literature.

New York Times

It’s a rare literary critic who attracts so much public attention, and there’s a good reason: few are as hellbent on rethinking the way we talk about literature.

Time Magazines Literary Supplement

The great iconoclast of literary criticism

Guardian - John Sutherland

The great iconoclast of literary criticism— John Sutherland

Guardian

Moretti (literature, Stanford Univ.; Signs Taken for Wonders) examines the notion of the 19th-century "bourgeois," their middle-class values, and well-known works such as Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as well as lesser-known novels such as Dinah Craik's 1856 John Halifax, Gentleman. He also investigates how diction changed through the 19th century as seen in the novels' characters. Added is the expertise of theorists Georg Lukács and Max Weber, among others, and the analysis of literary databases and proper use of encoded text employed in the digital humanities. For instance, Moretti acknowledges the rise of free indirect style, the subjugation of the subjective, the emergence of description in 19th-century literature as a signifier for "reality," and makes the worthy observation that "bourgeois" style balances a line between comedy and tragedy. Moretti's style works for philosophically minded readers and yet remains a bit slippery owing to its deferment of meaning—a deferment amplified by Moretti's questionable connection of "bourgeois" to "middle class." VERDICT This work is history and literary criticism steeped in a social consciousness for readers who love language and the granularity of word play and for hard-working thinkers.—Jesse A. Lambertson, Arlington P.L., VA

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The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature

The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature

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