The Crowd: British Literature and Public PoliticsUniversity of California Press, 2000 M12 3 - 275 páginas Between 1800 and 1850, political demonstrations and the tumult of a ballooning street life not only brought novel kinds of crowds onto the streets of London, but also fundamentally changed British ideas about public and private space. The Crowd sets out to demonstrate the influence of these new crowds, riots, and demonstrations on the period's literature. John Plotz offers compelling readings of works by Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Carlyle, William Wordsworth, Maria Edgeworth, and Charlotte Bronte, arguing that new "representative" crowds became a potent rival for the representational claims of literary texts themselves. As rivals in representation, these crowds triggered important changes not simply in how these authors depicted crowds, but in their notions of public life and privacy in general. The Crowd is the first book devoted to an analysis of crowds in British literature. In addition to this being a noteworthy and innovative contribution to literary criticism, it addresses ongoing debates in political theory on the nature of the public-political realm and offers a new reading of the contested public discourses of class, nation, and gender. In the end, it provides a sophisticated and rich analysis of an important facet of the beginning of the modern age. |
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Absentee action aesthetic argues Barnaby Rudge Berenice British Brontë Cambridge Carlyle Carlyle's Chartism Caroline and Shirley cash Castle Rackrent chapter Charlotte Brontë Chartist crowds circulation claims collection Confessions Culture demonstrations describes Dickens discursive dreams Edgeworth Edited effect emotional England English Mail-Coach essay face fact feeling figure Gordon Riots Harrington identity imagination important Jane Eyre Jewish Jews Lady Colodny's legible logic London crowds Luddite mail coach Maria Edgeworth mass mill mind Montenero Moore Moore's move national crowd newspapers nineteenth century novel novelistic numbers offer opium petition physical pleasure political presence protest public sphere Quincey Quincey's radical reader represent representation Residence in London rioters rival Robert romantic seems sense Shirley and Caroline Shirley's simply social sort space speech streets structure sympathy Thomas Thomas Carlyle Thomas De Quincey Tilly tion tional turn University Press Victorian vision Walter Benjamin word Wordsworth writing York
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Página 28 - The face of every one That passes by me is a mystery.' Thus have I looked, nor ceased to look, oppressed By thoughts of what and whither, when and how, Until the shapes before my eyes became A second-sight procession, such as glides Over still mountains, or appears in dreams...
Página 89 - If she lived, doubtless we must have been sometimes in search of each other, at the very same moment, through the...
Página 93 - I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable for this.
Página 22 - But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy. France standing on the top of golden hours, And human nature seeming born again.
Página 28 - Living amid the same perpetual flow Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity, by differences That have no law, no meaning, and no end...
Página 83 - Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher, or...
Página 216 - She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her ; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants...
Página 39 - A WONDERFUL fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!