Title Advertising, subjectivity and the nineteenth-century novel : Dickens, Balzac and the language of the walls / Sara Thornton

Published Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, ©2009

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 214 pages) : illustrations Series Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture. Contents Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of figures -- Introduction -- THE LANGUAGE OF THE WALLS: SPACES, PRACTICES, SUBJECTIVITIES -- Thoroughfares for Inscription -- Moving Text/Motion Pictures -- Montage, Mirage and the (Mis)behavior of Language -- Forms of Subjection -- The Making of the Subject -- READING THE DICKENS ADVERTISER: MERGING PARATEXT AND NOVEL -- The Floating Gaze -- 'Anti-Bleak House' -- Gothic Mechanisms of Advertisement and Novel -- BALZAC'S REVOLUTION OF SIGNS: ADVERTISEMENT AS TEXTUAL PRACTICE -- The Language of the Paris Walls -- The becoming virtual of César Birotteau -- Dissolving Literature: lost illusions or great expectations? -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index Summary Using the concept of the 'language of the walls' - an expression first used in 1855 - Sara Thornton explores the influence of advertising on the production and consumption of fiction from 1830-1870. Growing systems of advertising (on hoardings, posters, in periodicals and novels) were changing reading and writing practices - and bringing in their wake a new understanding of how the subject read and how language operated. A modernist aesthetic was created by the random collaging of advertising which allowed new structures of thought to emerge. Novelists, journalists and copywriters in France and Britain were able to theorize their own engagement with the advert, and to comment upon its creative and destructive labour. They recognized that the subject hailed by the text and image of the rapidly evolving urban scape was in part constituted by that world of text, relying on it to be in the world. Moving between historical enquiry and theoretical analysis, Thornton traces the early recognition of what we now call a 'virtual' world. She explains a crucial moment in print culture and proposes new readings of key texts by Dickens and Balzac Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Criticism and interpretation Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850 -- Criticism and interpretation SUBJECT Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850 fast Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 fast Subject Fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism Advertising in literature. Advertising copy -- History -- 19th century Books and reading -- History -- 19th century TRAVEL -- Special Interest -- Literary. LITERARY CRITICISM -- General. Advertising copy Advertising in literature Books and reading Fiction Reclame. Lezen. Romans. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780230236745 023023674X

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