Ben Nichols
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781526132833
- eISBN:
- 9781526158338
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526132840.00007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter argues that 'lesbian middle-brow' writing from the early part of the twentieth century offers an important counterpoint to queer theory's long-standing opposition to normativity. Whereas ...
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This chapter argues that 'lesbian middle-brow' writing from the early part of the twentieth century offers an important counterpoint to queer theory's long-standing opposition to normativity. Whereas early queer theoretical formulations opposed 'regimes of the normal' that specifically upheld heteronormativity, the sharpness of this critique has morphed into a more general position in which any kind of normativity or conformism is treated as intrinsically suspect. By contrast, novels with famous lesbian protagonists such as Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) and The Unlit Lamp (1924), along with Mary Renault's The Friendly Young Ladies (1944), show the manifold reasons why historical queers have been attached to the idea of the normal – for example, for the opportunity it offers of safety and protection from violence. Moreover, they show the importance of what might seem distinctly non-radical to contemporary readers – namely, middle-brow realism – in the history of lesbian representation and subjectivity. These middle-brow novels are the occasion to reflect on what keeps anti-normativity at the heart of queer theoretical strategy: the opportunity it provides of opposing a form of sameness framed as stultifying, conformist and assimilationist.Less
This chapter argues that 'lesbian middle-brow' writing from the early part of the twentieth century offers an important counterpoint to queer theory's long-standing opposition to normativity. Whereas early queer theoretical formulations opposed 'regimes of the normal' that specifically upheld heteronormativity, the sharpness of this critique has morphed into a more general position in which any kind of normativity or conformism is treated as intrinsically suspect. By contrast, novels with famous lesbian protagonists such as Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) and The Unlit Lamp (1924), along with Mary Renault's The Friendly Young Ladies (1944), show the manifold reasons why historical queers have been attached to the idea of the normal – for example, for the opportunity it offers of safety and protection from violence. Moreover, they show the importance of what might seem distinctly non-radical to contemporary readers – namely, middle-brow realism – in the history of lesbian representation and subjectivity. These middle-brow novels are the occasion to reflect on what keeps anti-normativity at the heart of queer theoretical strategy: the opportunity it provides of opposing a form of sameness framed as stultifying, conformist and assimilationist.
Janet Galligani Casey
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195338959
- eISBN:
- 9780199867103
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195338959.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter demonstrates the ways in which women’s rural fiction was heavily implicated in conversations about the encroachment of middlebrow culture, and discusses the remarkable popularity of ...
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This chapter demonstrates the ways in which women’s rural fiction was heavily implicated in conversations about the encroachment of middlebrow culture, and discusses the remarkable popularity of best-selling rural fiction by women. It analyzes the economy of literary prizes and the prominent placement of these novels within that economy, and attempts to unpack the presumed relations among women, sentimentality, and rurality. It also reads closely several best-sellers—by Edna Ferber, Martha Ostenso, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and Gladys Hasty Carroll—both for what they demonstrate about the relations among women, rurality, and the bookselling industry, and to refute the assertion that women’s farm novels of the period were trite, or that they evaded engagement with the pressing concerns of modernity.Less
This chapter demonstrates the ways in which women’s rural fiction was heavily implicated in conversations about the encroachment of middlebrow culture, and discusses the remarkable popularity of best-selling rural fiction by women. It analyzes the economy of literary prizes and the prominent placement of these novels within that economy, and attempts to unpack the presumed relations among women, sentimentality, and rurality. It also reads closely several best-sellers—by Edna Ferber, Martha Ostenso, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and Gladys Hasty Carroll—both for what they demonstrate about the relations among women, rurality, and the bookselling industry, and to refute the assertion that women’s farm novels of the period were trite, or that they evaded engagement with the pressing concerns of modernity.
Celia Marshik
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231175043
- eISBN:
- 9780231542968
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231175043.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
In much of modern fiction, it is the clothes that make the character. Garments embody personal and national histories. They convey wealth, status, aspiration, and morality (or a lack thereof). They ...
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In much of modern fiction, it is the clothes that make the character. Garments embody personal and national histories. They convey wealth, status, aspiration, and morality (or a lack thereof). They suggest where characters have been and where they might be headed, as well as whether or not they are aware of their fate. This study explores the agency of fashion in modern literature.
Celia Marshik’s study combines close readings of modernist and middlebrow works, a history of Britain in the early twentieth century, and the insights of thing theory. She focuses on four distinct categories of modern clothing: the evening gown, the mackintosh, the fancy dress costume, and secondhand attire. In their use of these clothes, we see authors negotiate shifting gender roles, weigh the value of individuality during national conflict, work through mortality, and depict changing class structures. Marshik’s dynamic comparisons put Ulysses in conversation with Rebecca, Punch cartoons, articles in Vogue, and letters from consumers, illuminating opinions about specific garments and a widespread anxiety that people were no more than what they wore. Throughout her readings, Marshik emphasizes the persistent animation of clothing—and objectification of individuals—in early-twentieth-century literature and society. She argues that while artists and intellectuals celebrated the ability of modern individuals to remake themselves, a range of literary works and popular publications points to a lingering anxiety about how political, social, and economic conditions continued to constrain the individual.Less
In much of modern fiction, it is the clothes that make the character. Garments embody personal and national histories. They convey wealth, status, aspiration, and morality (or a lack thereof). They suggest where characters have been and where they might be headed, as well as whether or not they are aware of their fate. This study explores the agency of fashion in modern literature.
Celia Marshik’s study combines close readings of modernist and middlebrow works, a history of Britain in the early twentieth century, and the insights of thing theory. She focuses on four distinct categories of modern clothing: the evening gown, the mackintosh, the fancy dress costume, and secondhand attire. In their use of these clothes, we see authors negotiate shifting gender roles, weigh the value of individuality during national conflict, work through mortality, and depict changing class structures. Marshik’s dynamic comparisons put Ulysses in conversation with Rebecca, Punch cartoons, articles in Vogue, and letters from consumers, illuminating opinions about specific garments and a widespread anxiety that people were no more than what they wore. Throughout her readings, Marshik emphasizes the persistent animation of clothing—and objectification of individuals—in early-twentieth-century literature and society. She argues that while artists and intellectuals celebrated the ability of modern individuals to remake themselves, a range of literary works and popular publications points to a lingering anxiety about how political, social, and economic conditions continued to constrain the individual.
Faye Hammill and Michelle Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381403
- eISBN:
- 9781781382332
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381403.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
A century ago, the golden age of magazine publishing coincided with the beginning of a golden age of travel. Images of speed and flight dominated the pages of the new mass-market periodicals. This ...
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A century ago, the golden age of magazine publishing coincided with the beginning of a golden age of travel. Images of speed and flight dominated the pages of the new mass-market periodicals. This book centres on Canada, where commercial magazines began to flourish in the 1920s alongside an expanding network of luxury railway hotels and transatlantic liner routes. The leading monthlies — among them Mayfair, Chatelaine, and La Revue Moderne — presented travel as both a mode of self-improvement and a way of negotiating national identity. This book announces a new cross-cultural approach to periodical studies, reading both French-and English-language magazines in relation to an emerging transatlantic middlebrow culture. Mainstream magazines, the text argues, forged a connection between upward mobility and geographical mobility. Fantasies of travel were circulated through fiction, articles, and advertisements, and used to sell fashions, foods, and domestic products as well as holidays.Less
A century ago, the golden age of magazine publishing coincided with the beginning of a golden age of travel. Images of speed and flight dominated the pages of the new mass-market periodicals. This book centres on Canada, where commercial magazines began to flourish in the 1920s alongside an expanding network of luxury railway hotels and transatlantic liner routes. The leading monthlies — among them Mayfair, Chatelaine, and La Revue Moderne — presented travel as both a mode of self-improvement and a way of negotiating national identity. This book announces a new cross-cultural approach to periodical studies, reading both French-and English-language magazines in relation to an emerging transatlantic middlebrow culture. Mainstream magazines, the text argues, forged a connection between upward mobility and geographical mobility. Fantasies of travel were circulated through fiction, articles, and advertisements, and used to sell fashions, foods, and domestic products as well as holidays.
Victoria Margree, Daniel Orrells, and Minna Vuohelainen (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526124340
- eISBN:
- 9781526136206
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526124340.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This collection of essays seeks to question the security of our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh, an important but neglected professional author. Richard ...
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This collection of essays seeks to question the security of our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh, an important but neglected professional author. Richard Bernard Heldmann (1857–1915) began his literary career as a writer of boys’ fiction, but, following a prison sentence for fraud, reinvented himself as ‘Richard Marsh’ in 1888. Marsh was a prolific and popular author of middlebrow genre fiction including Gothic, crime, humour, romance and adventure, whose bestselling Gothic novel The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) outsold Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Building on a burgeoning interest in Marsh’s writing, this collection of essays examines a broad array of Marsh’s genre fictions through the lens of cutting-edge critical theory, including print culture, New Historicism, disability studies, genre theory, New Economic Criticism, gender theory, postcolonial studies, thing theory, psychoanalysis, object relations theory and art history, producing innovative readings not only of Marsh but of the fin-de-siècle period. Marsh emerges here as a versatile contributor to the literary and journalistic culture of his time whose stories of shape-shifting monsters, daring but morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life helped to shape the genres of fiction with which we are familiar today. Marsh’s fictions reflect contemporary themes and anxieties while often offering unexpected, subversive and even counter-hegemonic takes on dominant narratives of gender, criminality, race and class, unsettling our perceptions of the fin de siècle.Less
This collection of essays seeks to question the security of our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh, an important but neglected professional author. Richard Bernard Heldmann (1857–1915) began his literary career as a writer of boys’ fiction, but, following a prison sentence for fraud, reinvented himself as ‘Richard Marsh’ in 1888. Marsh was a prolific and popular author of middlebrow genre fiction including Gothic, crime, humour, romance and adventure, whose bestselling Gothic novel The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) outsold Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Building on a burgeoning interest in Marsh’s writing, this collection of essays examines a broad array of Marsh’s genre fictions through the lens of cutting-edge critical theory, including print culture, New Historicism, disability studies, genre theory, New Economic Criticism, gender theory, postcolonial studies, thing theory, psychoanalysis, object relations theory and art history, producing innovative readings not only of Marsh but of the fin-de-siècle period. Marsh emerges here as a versatile contributor to the literary and journalistic culture of his time whose stories of shape-shifting monsters, daring but morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life helped to shape the genres of fiction with which we are familiar today. Marsh’s fictions reflect contemporary themes and anxieties while often offering unexpected, subversive and even counter-hegemonic takes on dominant narratives of gender, criminality, race and class, unsettling our perceptions of the fin de siècle.
Ross McKibbin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206729
- eISBN:
- 9780191677298
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206729.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Social History
The great majority of the English were attached to two forms of music — middlebrow and popular. This chapter traces the historical development of a middlebrow ‘canon’ of music, popular music, and ...
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The great majority of the English were attached to two forms of music — middlebrow and popular. This chapter traces the historical development of a middlebrow ‘canon’ of music, popular music, and dancing after the First World War. The middlebrow canon, aside from its native origins, was drawn largely from European influences, but outside influences on popular music were almost entirely American. The chapter assesses how far English popular music succumbed to or withstood America and looks more generally at the part dancing played in people's lives. Throughout this period there were three musical publics. There was a very small public for ‘serious’ music, a considerably larger one for ‘middlebrow’ music, and a much larger one for ‘popular’ music.Less
The great majority of the English were attached to two forms of music — middlebrow and popular. This chapter traces the historical development of a middlebrow ‘canon’ of music, popular music, and dancing after the First World War. The middlebrow canon, aside from its native origins, was drawn largely from European influences, but outside influences on popular music were almost entirely American. The chapter assesses how far English popular music succumbed to or withstood America and looks more generally at the part dancing played in people's lives. Throughout this period there were three musical publics. There was a very small public for ‘serious’ music, a considerably larger one for ‘middlebrow’ music, and a much larger one for ‘popular’ music.
Vike Martina Plock
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474427418
- eISBN:
- 9781474434607
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474427418.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
An unprecedented sartorial revolution occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century when the tight-laced silhouettes of Victorian women gave way to the figure of the Flapper. Modernism, Fashion ...
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An unprecedented sartorial revolution occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century when the tight-laced silhouettes of Victorian women gave way to the figure of the Flapper. Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers demonstrates how five female novelists of the interwar period engaged with an emerging fashion discourse that concealed capitalist modernity’s economic reliance on mass-manufactured, uniform-looking productions by ostensibly celebrating originality and difference. For Edith Wharton, Jean Rhys, Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf fashion was never just the provider of guidelines on what to wear. Rather, it was an important concern, offering them opportunities to express their opinions about identity politics, about contemporary gender dynamics and about changing conceptions of authorship and literary productivity. By examining their published work and unpublished correspondence, this book investigates how the chosen authors used fashion terminology to discuss the possibilities available to women to express difference and individuality in a world that actually favoured standardised products and collective formations.Less
An unprecedented sartorial revolution occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century when the tight-laced silhouettes of Victorian women gave way to the figure of the Flapper. Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers demonstrates how five female novelists of the interwar period engaged with an emerging fashion discourse that concealed capitalist modernity’s economic reliance on mass-manufactured, uniform-looking productions by ostensibly celebrating originality and difference. For Edith Wharton, Jean Rhys, Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf fashion was never just the provider of guidelines on what to wear. Rather, it was an important concern, offering them opportunities to express their opinions about identity politics, about contemporary gender dynamics and about changing conceptions of authorship and literary productivity. By examining their published work and unpublished correspondence, this book investigates how the chosen authors used fashion terminology to discuss the possibilities available to women to express difference and individuality in a world that actually favoured standardised products and collective formations.
Clarisse Berthezène
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719086496
- eISBN:
- 9781781708941
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719086496.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Conflict Politics and Policy
This book examines attempts by the British Conservative party in the interwar years to capture and train the minds of the new electorate and create a counter-culture to what they saw as the ...
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This book examines attempts by the British Conservative party in the interwar years to capture and train the minds of the new electorate and create a counter-culture to what they saw as the intellectual hegemony of the Left. It is an important contribution to the political culture of Conservatism from the late 1920s to the early 1950s with a particular emphasis on the social and intellectual history of the Conservative milieu. This volume tells the fascinating story of the Bonar Law Memorial College, Ashridge, founded in 1929 as a ‘College of citizenship’ to provide political education through both teaching and publications. The College aimed at creating ‘Conservative Fabians’ who were to publish and disseminate Conservative literature, which meant not only explicitly political works but literary, historical and cultural work that carried implicit Conservative messages. After 1945, as the Conservative party sought to jettison its Baldwinian Past, Ashridge lost its political anchor, and moved, through complex stages, to being refounded as a management training college in 1954. This book modifies our understanding of the history of intellectual debate in Britain and it sheds new light on the history of the ‘middlebrow’ and how that category became a weapon for the Conservatives. It will become necessary reading both for scholars and students of modern British history and politics and more generally for those interested in the history of Conservatism.Less
This book examines attempts by the British Conservative party in the interwar years to capture and train the minds of the new electorate and create a counter-culture to what they saw as the intellectual hegemony of the Left. It is an important contribution to the political culture of Conservatism from the late 1920s to the early 1950s with a particular emphasis on the social and intellectual history of the Conservative milieu. This volume tells the fascinating story of the Bonar Law Memorial College, Ashridge, founded in 1929 as a ‘College of citizenship’ to provide political education through both teaching and publications. The College aimed at creating ‘Conservative Fabians’ who were to publish and disseminate Conservative literature, which meant not only explicitly political works but literary, historical and cultural work that carried implicit Conservative messages. After 1945, as the Conservative party sought to jettison its Baldwinian Past, Ashridge lost its political anchor, and moved, through complex stages, to being refounded as a management training college in 1954. This book modifies our understanding of the history of intellectual debate in Britain and it sheds new light on the history of the ‘middlebrow’ and how that category became a weapon for the Conservatives. It will become necessary reading both for scholars and students of modern British history and politics and more generally for those interested in the history of Conservatism.
Kristin Bluemel and Michael McCluskey (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474420952
- eISBN:
- 9781474453851
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420952.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Rural Modernity in Britain argues that the rural areas of twentieth-century Britain were impacted by modernization just as much—if not more—than urban and suburban areas. It shifts the focus for ...
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Rural Modernity in Britain argues that the rural areas of twentieth-century Britain were impacted by modernization just as much—if not more—than urban and suburban areas. It shifts the focus for studies of modernity and modernism onto the art, industries, and everyday life of rural people and places. In the early twentieth century, rural areas experienced economic depression, the expansion of transportation and communication networks, the roll out of electricity, the loss of land, and the erosion of local identities. Who celebrated these changes? Who resisted them? Who documented them? The fifteen chapters of Rural Modernity address these questions through investigations into fiction, non-fiction, film, music, and painting, among other genres and media. They focus on men and women writers and artists, with progressive, moderate, or conservative politics, modernist, middlebrow, or proletarian tastes, from Scottish, Welsh, and English regions. Together, the chapters make an interdisciplinary case that the rural means more than just the often-studied countryside of southern England, a retreat from the consequences of modernity; rather, the rural emerges as a source for new versions of the modern, with an active role in the formation and development of British experiences and representations of modernity.Less
Rural Modernity in Britain argues that the rural areas of twentieth-century Britain were impacted by modernization just as much—if not more—than urban and suburban areas. It shifts the focus for studies of modernity and modernism onto the art, industries, and everyday life of rural people and places. In the early twentieth century, rural areas experienced economic depression, the expansion of transportation and communication networks, the roll out of electricity, the loss of land, and the erosion of local identities. Who celebrated these changes? Who resisted them? Who documented them? The fifteen chapters of Rural Modernity address these questions through investigations into fiction, non-fiction, film, music, and painting, among other genres and media. They focus on men and women writers and artists, with progressive, moderate, or conservative politics, modernist, middlebrow, or proletarian tastes, from Scottish, Welsh, and English regions. Together, the chapters make an interdisciplinary case that the rural means more than just the often-studied countryside of southern England, a retreat from the consequences of modernity; rather, the rural emerges as a source for new versions of the modern, with an active role in the formation and development of British experiences and representations of modernity.
Elke D'hoker and Chris Mourant (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474461085
- eISBN:
- 9781474496032
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461085.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This collection of original essays highlights the intertwined fates of the modern short story and periodical culture in the period 1880–1950, the heyday of magazine short fiction in Britain. Through ...
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This collection of original essays highlights the intertwined fates of the modern short story and periodical culture in the period 1880–1950, the heyday of magazine short fiction in Britain. Through case studies that focus on particular magazines, short stories and authors, chapters investigate the presence, status and functioning of short stories within a variety of periodical publications – highbrow and popular, mainstream and specialised, middlebrow and avant-garde. Examining the impact of social and publishing networks on the production, dissemination and reception of short stories, this essay collection foregrounds the ways in which magazines and periodicals shaped conversations about the short story form and prompted or provoked writers into developing the genre.Less
This collection of original essays highlights the intertwined fates of the modern short story and periodical culture in the period 1880–1950, the heyday of magazine short fiction in Britain. Through case studies that focus on particular magazines, short stories and authors, chapters investigate the presence, status and functioning of short stories within a variety of periodical publications – highbrow and popular, mainstream and specialised, middlebrow and avant-garde. Examining the impact of social and publishing networks on the production, dissemination and reception of short stories, this essay collection foregrounds the ways in which magazines and periodicals shaped conversations about the short story form and prompted or provoked writers into developing the genre.
Tobias Boes
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501744990
- eISBN:
- 9781501745003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501744990.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter argues that the process by which Thomas Mann was canonized as the “greatest living man of letters” in the New World certainly had many similarities to his staging as a representative ...
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This chapter argues that the process by which Thomas Mann was canonized as the “greatest living man of letters” in the New World certainly had many similarities to his staging as a representative writer in the Old. But there were enormous differences as well, and these would turn out to be consequential for literary history, including literary history back in Germany. The chapter explains how Mann's rise to literary prominence in the United States took place within the larger context of a newly emerging and distinctively American cultural formation, the “middlebrow.” At first, this seems antithetical to Mann's associations with “serious” modern literature. However, the chapter reveals that modernism and the middlebrow have never truly stood in opposition to one another.Less
This chapter argues that the process by which Thomas Mann was canonized as the “greatest living man of letters” in the New World certainly had many similarities to his staging as a representative writer in the Old. But there were enormous differences as well, and these would turn out to be consequential for literary history, including literary history back in Germany. The chapter explains how Mann's rise to literary prominence in the United States took place within the larger context of a newly emerging and distinctively American cultural formation, the “middlebrow.” At first, this seems antithetical to Mann's associations with “serious” modern literature. However, the chapter reveals that modernism and the middlebrow have never truly stood in opposition to one another.
Matthew S. Hedstrom
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195374490
- eISBN:
- 9780199979141
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195374490.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The Religious Book Club, founded in 1927, was a major institution of religious middlebrow culture through the middle decades of the twentieth century. It exemplified the importance of book clubs to ...
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The Religious Book Club, founded in 1927, was a major institution of religious middlebrow culture through the middle decades of the twentieth century. It exemplified the importance of book clubs to the wider middlebrow culture, and illustrates the reading and consuming practices that shaped encounters with religious books in this period. In addition to book clubs, a variety of reading programs based on book lists, such as the Hazen Books in Religion series, and the lists produced by the Religious Books Round Table of the American Library Association, brought religious middlebrow reading practices to the American middle class. Religious middlebrow culture most specifically introduced readers to forms of liberal religion rooted in psychology and mysticism, and thereby shaped middle class spirituality for decades to come.Less
The Religious Book Club, founded in 1927, was a major institution of religious middlebrow culture through the middle decades of the twentieth century. It exemplified the importance of book clubs to the wider middlebrow culture, and illustrates the reading and consuming practices that shaped encounters with religious books in this period. In addition to book clubs, a variety of reading programs based on book lists, such as the Hazen Books in Religion series, and the lists produced by the Religious Books Round Table of the American Library Association, brought religious middlebrow reading practices to the American middle class. Religious middlebrow culture most specifically introduced readers to forms of liberal religion rooted in psychology and mysticism, and thereby shaped middle class spirituality for decades to come.
Stacy Wolf
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- December 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190639525
- eISBN:
- 9780190639563
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190639525.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Popular
As a ubiquitous national performance form, musical theatre—an utterly American, unapologetically commercial, earnestly popular, middlebrow genre of art and entertainment—has astonishing staying ...
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As a ubiquitous national performance form, musical theatre—an utterly American, unapologetically commercial, earnestly popular, middlebrow genre of art and entertainment—has astonishing staying power. Local productions cross economic, racial, and geographic divides, assuming the status of a national folk practice. Shows are handed down across generations, remarkable in a country with so few common cultural experiences. Artists and audiences learn the Broadway canon, absorb the musical’s conventions, and have a lot of fun in the process. “Broadway,” as a globally recognizable brand, maintains its status as musical theatre’s birthplace, but the form persists in American culture thanks to amateur productions at high schools, community theatres, afterschool programs, summer camps, and dinner theatres. Beyond Broadway illustrates the widespread presence and persistence of musical theatre in US culture and examines it as a social practice: a live, visceral experience of creating, watching, and listening. Why does local musical theatre flourish in America? Why do people continue to find it pleasurable? Why do they passionately engage in an old-fashioned, slow artistic practice that requires intense, person-to-person collaboration? Why do audiences still flock to musicals in their hometowns? What does local musical theatre do? Beyond Broadway answers these questions by traveling across America, stopping at elementary schools, a middle school performance festival, afterschool programs, high schools, summer camps, state park outdoor theatres, community theatres, and dinner theatres. This expedition illustrates the musical’s abundance and longevity as a thriving social activity that touches millions of lives.Less
As a ubiquitous national performance form, musical theatre—an utterly American, unapologetically commercial, earnestly popular, middlebrow genre of art and entertainment—has astonishing staying power. Local productions cross economic, racial, and geographic divides, assuming the status of a national folk practice. Shows are handed down across generations, remarkable in a country with so few common cultural experiences. Artists and audiences learn the Broadway canon, absorb the musical’s conventions, and have a lot of fun in the process. “Broadway,” as a globally recognizable brand, maintains its status as musical theatre’s birthplace, but the form persists in American culture thanks to amateur productions at high schools, community theatres, afterschool programs, summer camps, and dinner theatres. Beyond Broadway illustrates the widespread presence and persistence of musical theatre in US culture and examines it as a social practice: a live, visceral experience of creating, watching, and listening. Why does local musical theatre flourish in America? Why do people continue to find it pleasurable? Why do they passionately engage in an old-fashioned, slow artistic practice that requires intense, person-to-person collaboration? Why do audiences still flock to musicals in their hometowns? What does local musical theatre do? Beyond Broadway answers these questions by traveling across America, stopping at elementary schools, a middle school performance festival, afterschool programs, high schools, summer camps, state park outdoor theatres, community theatres, and dinner theatres. This expedition illustrates the musical’s abundance and longevity as a thriving social activity that touches millions of lives.
Jaime Harker
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679133
- eISBN:
- 9781452948072
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679133.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
How could one write about gay life for the mainstream public in Cold War America? Many midcentury gay American writers, hampered by external and internal censors, never managed to do it. But ...
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How could one write about gay life for the mainstream public in Cold War America? Many midcentury gay American writers, hampered by external and internal censors, never managed to do it. But Christopher Isherwood did, and what makes his accomplishment more remarkable is that while he was negotiating his identity as a gay writer, he was reinventing himself as an American one. This book shows that Isherwood refashioned himself as an American writer following his emigration from England by immersing himself in the gay reading, writing, and publishing communities in Cold War America. Drawing extensively on Isherwood’s archives, including manuscript drafts and unpublished correspondence with readers, publishers, and other writers, this book demonstrates how Isherwood mainstreamed gay content for heterosexual readers in his postwar novels while also covertly writing for gay audiences and encouraging a symbiotic relationship between writer and reader. The result—in such novels as The World in the Evening, Down There on a Visit, A Single Man, and A Meeting by the River—was a complex, layered form of writing that this book calls “middlebrow camp,” a mode that extended the boundaries of both gay and middlebrow fiction.Less
How could one write about gay life for the mainstream public in Cold War America? Many midcentury gay American writers, hampered by external and internal censors, never managed to do it. But Christopher Isherwood did, and what makes his accomplishment more remarkable is that while he was negotiating his identity as a gay writer, he was reinventing himself as an American one. This book shows that Isherwood refashioned himself as an American writer following his emigration from England by immersing himself in the gay reading, writing, and publishing communities in Cold War America. Drawing extensively on Isherwood’s archives, including manuscript drafts and unpublished correspondence with readers, publishers, and other writers, this book demonstrates how Isherwood mainstreamed gay content for heterosexual readers in his postwar novels while also covertly writing for gay audiences and encouraging a symbiotic relationship between writer and reader. The result—in such novels as The World in the Evening, Down There on a Visit, A Single Man, and A Meeting by the River—was a complex, layered form of writing that this book calls “middlebrow camp,” a mode that extended the boundaries of both gay and middlebrow fiction.
Juliette Atkinson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780197266090
- eISBN:
- 9780191860003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266090.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
There are sound reasons for concluding in 1870–1. The Franco-Prussian War affected attitudes towards France, some of France’s major novelists died, a new generation of novelists led by Zola was on ...
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There are sound reasons for concluding in 1870–1. The Franco-Prussian War affected attitudes towards France, some of France’s major novelists died, a new generation of novelists led by Zola was on the rise, and the 1870 Education Act created fresh concerns about the composition and tastes of the reading public. Although interest in French literature did not begin in the 1870s, as many critics have claimed, the decade did mark a more defiant attitude towards supposed Victorian prudery, and a willingness to highlight and champion the transgressive qualities of French literature. It was in this period that censorshiptook centre stage, but those who resisted it were also ambivalent about the wisdom of allowing readers to access French works indiscriminately. As in previous decades, the critical discourse was often quietly challenged by reading practices.Less
There are sound reasons for concluding in 1870–1. The Franco-Prussian War affected attitudes towards France, some of France’s major novelists died, a new generation of novelists led by Zola was on the rise, and the 1870 Education Act created fresh concerns about the composition and tastes of the reading public. Although interest in French literature did not begin in the 1870s, as many critics have claimed, the decade did mark a more defiant attitude towards supposed Victorian prudery, and a willingness to highlight and champion the transgressive qualities of French literature. It was in this period that censorshiptook centre stage, but those who resisted it were also ambivalent about the wisdom of allowing readers to access French works indiscriminately. As in previous decades, the critical discourse was often quietly challenged by reading practices.
Alexandra Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190912666
- eISBN:
- 9780190912697
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190912666.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
Opera in the Jazz Age examines the place of opera in the contemporary ‘battle of the brows’: a debate, prompted by the growth of the mass entertainment industry, about the extent to which art forms ...
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Opera in the Jazz Age examines the place of opera in the contemporary ‘battle of the brows’: a debate, prompted by the growth of the mass entertainment industry, about the extent to which art forms ought to be labelled ‘highbrow’, ‘middlebrow’, or ‘lowbrow’. The book considers this question from a number of viewpoints, examining topics including: the audience for opera during the period; opera’s interactions with forms of popular culture including jazz, film, and middlebrow novels; and the ways in which different types and nationalities of opera were categorised differently. A number of significant figures in the highbrow–lowbrow debate are scrutinised, among them highbrow and middlebrow critics, the mythical figure of the ‘man in the street’, and the much reviled celebrity singer. The book explains how modern technological dissemination methods such as gramophone recordings and broadcasting came to bear upon questions of cultural categorisation, as did contemporary anxieties about national identity. The book concludes that opera was very difficult to categorise according to the new terms: for some commentators it was too highbrow; for others not highbrow enough. Examining the battle of the brows through an operatic lens challenges received wisdom by revealing the fault lines in this supposedly definitive system of cultural categorisation, undermining any simplistic binary between the high and the low. More broadly, the book also gives a detailed account of British operatic culture of the 1920s from the perspectives of performance, staging, opera-going, and criticism.Less
Opera in the Jazz Age examines the place of opera in the contemporary ‘battle of the brows’: a debate, prompted by the growth of the mass entertainment industry, about the extent to which art forms ought to be labelled ‘highbrow’, ‘middlebrow’, or ‘lowbrow’. The book considers this question from a number of viewpoints, examining topics including: the audience for opera during the period; opera’s interactions with forms of popular culture including jazz, film, and middlebrow novels; and the ways in which different types and nationalities of opera were categorised differently. A number of significant figures in the highbrow–lowbrow debate are scrutinised, among them highbrow and middlebrow critics, the mythical figure of the ‘man in the street’, and the much reviled celebrity singer. The book explains how modern technological dissemination methods such as gramophone recordings and broadcasting came to bear upon questions of cultural categorisation, as did contemporary anxieties about national identity. The book concludes that opera was very difficult to categorise according to the new terms: for some commentators it was too highbrow; for others not highbrow enough. Examining the battle of the brows through an operatic lens challenges received wisdom by revealing the fault lines in this supposedly definitive system of cultural categorisation, undermining any simplistic binary between the high and the low. More broadly, the book also gives a detailed account of British operatic culture of the 1920s from the perspectives of performance, staging, opera-going, and criticism.
John Howland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520271036
- eISBN:
- 9780520951358
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520271036.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
From roughly 1940 to 1945, a number of prominent big band leaders expanded their ensembles by adding strings and other orchestral instruments. Capitol Records stood at the forefront of this movement ...
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From roughly 1940 to 1945, a number of prominent big band leaders expanded their ensembles by adding strings and other orchestral instruments. Capitol Records stood at the forefront of this movement in the late 1940s and 1950s, releasing a variety of richly orchestrated, urbane, jazz-inflected recordings, including acclaimed releases by Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle. While the postwar period saw the decline of the traditional big band as a commercial force in popular culture, these jazz-pop ventures reinvented swing for the hi-fi era. Through close study of select arrangements, contemporary cultural discourse, and marketing and promotion, this essay articulates the larger aesthetic issues and cultural conditions that shaped the hybrid, middlebrow ideals of these jazz-with-strings subgenres.Less
From roughly 1940 to 1945, a number of prominent big band leaders expanded their ensembles by adding strings and other orchestral instruments. Capitol Records stood at the forefront of this movement in the late 1940s and 1950s, releasing a variety of richly orchestrated, urbane, jazz-inflected recordings, including acclaimed releases by Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle. While the postwar period saw the decline of the traditional big band as a commercial force in popular culture, these jazz-pop ventures reinvented swing for the hi-fi era. Through close study of select arrangements, contemporary cultural discourse, and marketing and promotion, this essay articulates the larger aesthetic issues and cultural conditions that shaped the hybrid, middlebrow ideals of these jazz-with-strings subgenres.
Helen Southworth
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642274
- eISBN:
- 9780748651979
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642274.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Combining literary criticism, book history, biography and sociology, this book weaves together the stories of the lesser known authors, artists and press workers with the canonical names linked to ...
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Combining literary criticism, book history, biography and sociology, this book weaves together the stories of the lesser known authors, artists and press workers with the canonical names linked to the Hogarth Press. Using previously unpublished archived material, it presents case studies on West Indian writer C.L.R. James, Welsh poet Huw Menai, child poet Joan Easdale and American artist E. McKnight Kauffer; and studies the topics of imperialism, the middlebrow, religion, translation, the marketplace and poetry, which dominated the era of their work.Less
Combining literary criticism, book history, biography and sociology, this book weaves together the stories of the lesser known authors, artists and press workers with the canonical names linked to the Hogarth Press. Using previously unpublished archived material, it presents case studies on West Indian writer C.L.R. James, Welsh poet Huw Menai, child poet Joan Easdale and American artist E. McKnight Kauffer; and studies the topics of imperialism, the middlebrow, religion, translation, the marketplace and poetry, which dominated the era of their work.
Tom Ryall
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719064524
- eISBN:
- 9781781703007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719064524.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter provides an account of the films of Anthony Asquith, and draws attention to the varied body of work with which he is associated. His works have been positioned in relation to the various ...
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This chapter provides an account of the films of Anthony Asquith, and draws attention to the varied body of work with which he is associated. His works have been positioned in relation to the various directions taken by the British film during the period of his career, and he is regarded as one of the most underrated film directors in British film history. Although not ignored by scholars and critics, Asquith's work has certainly not had anything like the attention enjoyed by his most distinguished contemporary, Alfred Hitchcock, and neither has it had the consideration devoted to figures such as Michael Powell and David Lean. The selection represents a diverse career in which art cinema, middlebrow culture, and popular art are reflected, although the films chosen are not intended to indicate any particular ranking in Asquith's career as a whole.Less
This chapter provides an account of the films of Anthony Asquith, and draws attention to the varied body of work with which he is associated. His works have been positioned in relation to the various directions taken by the British film during the period of his career, and he is regarded as one of the most underrated film directors in British film history. Although not ignored by scholars and critics, Asquith's work has certainly not had anything like the attention enjoyed by his most distinguished contemporary, Alfred Hitchcock, and neither has it had the consideration devoted to figures such as Michael Powell and David Lean. The selection represents a diverse career in which art cinema, middlebrow culture, and popular art are reflected, although the films chosen are not intended to indicate any particular ranking in Asquith's career as a whole.
Tom Ryall
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719064524
- eISBN:
- 9781781703007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719064524.003.0017
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter sheds light on the post-war British film industry and the turn Asquith's career took during these times. He was well established as one of the British cinema's leading directors on the ...
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This chapter sheds light on the post-war British film industry and the turn Asquith's career took during these times. He was well established as one of the British cinema's leading directors on the basis of a diverse output: the middlebrow drama adaptations of Shaw and Rattigan, lowbrow genre films including a comedy thriller and a costume melodrama, patriotic war pictures and documentary dramas. Asquith resumed his directing career with While the Sun Shines (1947), and his next film, The Winslow Boy (1948), was a Rattigan adaptation in which he corraborated with Korda's revived London Films and British Lion. The Importance of Being Earnest, a version of Oscar Wilde's famous play from the 1890s, was his first film in colour. Asquith's genre exercises from the early 1950s, though containing much of interest – innovatory narrative structures, imaginative mise-enscène, lyricism, and poetry, the radical ideological questioning of war – remain little-known films on the periphery of the mainstream British cinema of the time.Less
This chapter sheds light on the post-war British film industry and the turn Asquith's career took during these times. He was well established as one of the British cinema's leading directors on the basis of a diverse output: the middlebrow drama adaptations of Shaw and Rattigan, lowbrow genre films including a comedy thriller and a costume melodrama, patriotic war pictures and documentary dramas. Asquith resumed his directing career with While the Sun Shines (1947), and his next film, The Winslow Boy (1948), was a Rattigan adaptation in which he corraborated with Korda's revived London Films and British Lion. The Importance of Being Earnest, a version of Oscar Wilde's famous play from the 1890s, was his first film in colour. Asquith's genre exercises from the early 1950s, though containing much of interest – innovatory narrative structures, imaginative mise-enscène, lyricism, and poetry, the radical ideological questioning of war – remain little-known films on the periphery of the mainstream British cinema of the time.