Details

Subject(s)

• American fiction—19th century—History and criticism [Browse]
• Material culture in literature [Browse]
• Economics and literature—United States—History—19th century [Browse]
• Material culture—United States—History—19th century [Browse]
• Production (Economic theory) in literature [Browse]
• Consumption (Economics) in literature [Browse]
• Possessiveness in literature [Browse]

Summary note

• "Brown's new study explores the roots of modern America's fascination with things and the problem that objects posed for American literature at the turn of the century. This was an era when the invention, production, distribution, and consumption of things suddenly came to define a national culture. Brown shows how crucial novels of the time made things not a solution to problems, but problems in their own right.
• Writers such as Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Henry James ask why and how we use objects to make meaning, to make or remake ourselves, to organize our anxieties and affections, to sublimate our fears, and to shape our wildest dreams. Offering a remarkably new way to think about materialism. A Sense of Things will be essential reading for anyone interested in American literature and culture."--BOOK JACKET.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-235) and index.

Contents

• Introduction: The Idea of Things and the Ideas in Them
• 1. The Tyranny of Things
• Fetishisms
• Object Lessons
• A Trivial Thing
• Democratic Objects
• 2. The Nature of Things
• Iteration
• Creatures of Habit
• Possession
• The Miracle of History
• Misuse Value
• 3. Regional Artifacts
• Natural Histories
• Life-Groups and the Cultural Thing
• Material History
• "A Kind of Fetichism"
• Waste Matter
• Modernist Archeology
• 4. The Decoration of Houses
• Decor
• The Novel Demeuble
• Reification as Utopia
• Things to Think With
• Golden Bowls
• Coda: The Death and Life of Things: Modernity and Modernism.

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ISBN

• 0226076288 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0226076296 (pbk : alk. paper)

LCCN

2002010611

OCLC

50234957

RCP

C - S

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