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Book Cover
Book
Author Outka, Elizabeth.

Title Consuming traditions : modernity, modernism, and the commodified authentic / Elizabeth Outka
Published Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  809.919 09466/C  AVAILABLE
Description xviii, 214 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Series Modernist literature & culture
Modernist literature & culture.
Contents 1. Introduction: Selling Authenticity -- Pt. I. Commodified Nostalgia and the Country Aesthetic -- 2. The Past Is a Present Country: Model Towns and Commercial Utopias -- 3. Buying Time: E. M. Forster and the Neo-nostalgic Home -- Pt. II. Urban Authenticities -- 4. The Vanishing Act of Commercialism: Selfridges, Modernity, and the Purified Marketplace -- 5. "Lustrous behind Glass":Woolf, Window Shopping, and Authentic Display -- 6. Conclusion: Modernist Excursions
Summary "Examples of faux authenticity abound in today's marketplace. Trading on the commercial appeal of the ersatz real, however, is far from a twenty-first century invention. As Consuming Traditions investigates, the allure of commodified nostalgia and the selling of the "genuine" article emerged as powerful forces in early twentieth-century Britain."
"Elizabeth Outka redefines the debates surrounding literary modernism and the market as she explores the marketing of authenticity, a crucial but overlooked development in the history of modernity. With an interdisciplinary approach that probes novels, plays, advertisements, and architecture, Consuming Traditions presents a convincing case for how the "commodified authentic" - the selling of objects and places allegedly free of commercial taint - marks a critical turn in modern culture and offers a new way to understand literary modernism and its complex negotiation of tradition and novelty. Drawing on cultural studies, theories of consumerism, and works by Shaw, Forster, Woolf, Joyce, and others, Outka examines how literature both enacted and critiqued the larger revolution in material culture."--BOOK JACKET
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references ( pages 199-207) and index
Subject English literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
Modernism (Literature) -- Great Britain.
Material culture in literature.
Nostalgia in literature.
Authenticity (Philosophy) in literature.
Consumption (Economics) -- Psychological aspects.
Commercial products -- Psychological aspects.
Commerce in literature.
Marketing -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
LC no. 2008011262
ISBN 9780195372694 alkaline paper
0195372697 alkaline paper