Just Looking (Routledge Revivals) - Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola

List of contents

1. Introduction 2. Commerce and Femininity 3. Making up Women: Gissing’s Eve’s Ransom 4. Starring: Dreiser’s Sister Carrie 5. "Traffic in Her Desires": Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames 6. Culture and the Book Business 7. Making it: Gissing’s New Grub Street 8. The Artist as Adman: Dreiser’s The "Genius" 9. Working: Zola’s L’Oeuvre

About the author

Rachel Bowlby

Summary

The spectacular development of early consumer society in Britain, France and the United States had a profound impact on constructions of femininity and masculinity, and commercial and cultural values in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on novels by Theodore Dreiser, George Gissing and Emile Zola, Just Looking, first published in 1985, addresses itself to a central paradox of the period: the perceived antithesis of the terms "commerce" and "culture" which emerged at a time which saw the actual drawing together of commercial and cultural practices.
Drawing on structural, psychoanalytic and Marxist-feminist theory, Rachel Bowlby retrieves a relatively neglected literary area for contemporary political and theoretical concerns, re-establishing the naturalist novel as a rich source for feminists, literary theorists and cultural historians.

Additional text

'Well researched, excellently written, highly intelligent and of central relevance to current literary-theoretical preoccupations.’ – Terry Eagleton
‘Written at that frontier or cross-roads where literary study and sociological or political study are being brought together, this is an important book, one remarkable for its penetration and economy.’ – J. Hillis Miller

Product details

• Authors: Rachel Bowlby, Bowlby Rachel, Rachel Bowlby
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 18.12.2009
• EAN: 9780415573153
• ISBN: 978-0-415-57315-3
• No. of pages: 204
• Series: Routledge Revivals; Routledge Revivals
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; History, Sociology, Cultural Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors, LITERARY CRITICISM / Feminist, Humanities, Feminism & feminist theory, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Gender studies, gender groups, Feminism and feminist theory, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000