Franco Moretti Boeken

"The bourgeois ... Not so long ago, this notion seemed indispensable to social analysis; these days, one might go years without hearing it mentioned. Capitalism is more powerful than ever, but its human embodiment seems to have vanished. 'I am a member of the bourgeois class, feel myself to be such, and have been brought up on its opinions and ideals,' wrote Max Weber, in 1895. Who could repeat these words today? Bourgeois 'opinions and ideals' -- what are they?" Thus begins Franco Moretti's study of the bourgeois in modern European literature -- a major new analysis of the once-dominant culture and its literary decline and fall. Moretti's gallery of individual portraits is entwined with the analysis of specific keywords -- "useful" and "earnest," "efficiency," "influence," "comfort," "roba"-- and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. From the "working master" of the opening chapter, through the seriousness of nineteenth-century novels, the conservative hegemony of Victorian Britain, the "national malformations" of the Southern and Eastern periphery, and the radical self-critique of Ibsen's twelve-play cycle, the book charts the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and for its current irrelevance. -- Publisher's website.

Building a theory of the modern epic which has provided many of the sacred texts of Western literary culture, this work covers epics from Faust to One Hundred Years of Solitude. The West's reception of these texts constitutes a ritual of self-absolution for centuries of colonialism.

The influential and controversial critic takes literary history out of the classroom and into the publicIn the field of literary history and theory, Franco Moretti is synonymous with innovation. The cofounder of the Stanford Literary Lab, he brought quantitative methods into the study of the novel, enabling a “distant” reading that uses computation to analyze literary production over centuries. But at the same time, he was also teaching undergraduates the history of literature. Knowing Moretti, it’s no surprise that he didn’t teach the course the accepted one author after another, in a long uninterrupted chain. Instead, he put an irregular chessboard in front of his students that was too strange to be taken for granted. Literary history had become a problem, and he offered a solution.In Far Country, Moretti take these lectures out of the classroom and lets us share in the passion and excitement that comes from radical critique. Unconstrained by genre, Moretti juxtaposes Whitman and Baudelaire, the Western and film noir, even Rembrandt and Warhol, illuminating each through their opposition. With his guidance, we revel in the process of transformation―the earthquakes that shook the “how” of artistic form―and begin to shape a new view on American culture.Bracing in its insight and provocative in its conclusions, Far Country is a critical look at the development of American cultural hegemony.

Exploring the innovative ideas of Franco Moretti, this guide delves into his unique approach to literary criticism, emphasizing the importance of quantitative analysis in understanding literature. It highlights his concepts of "distant reading" and the role of graphs and maps in literary studies, offering fresh perspectives on texts and their cultural contexts. Readers will gain insight into how Moretti's methods challenge traditional close reading and encourage a broader understanding of literary phenomena across different periods and genres.

Die industrielle Revolution hat keinen Stein auf dem anderen gelassen. Sie hat alle »altehrwürdigen Vorstellungen und Anschauungen« aufgelöst, alles »Ständische und Stehende verdampft, alles Heilige« entweiht, konstatieren Marx und Engels im »Kommunistischen Manifest«. Die Protagonisten dieser Umwälzung sind die Bürger, die Kaufleute und Industriekapitäne. Die Figur des Bourgeois hat nicht nur Max Weber, Werner Sombart und Joseph Schumpeter fasziniert, sie spielt auch eine Hauptrolle in den großen Werken der Weltliteratur: bei Defoe und Goethe, Balzac und Dickens, bei Thomas Mann und Henrik Ibsen. Franco Moretti rekonstruiert die Mentalität dieser Ära durch das Fenster Literatur: Warum hört Robinson Crusoe auch dann nicht auf zu arbeiten, als sein Überleben auf der paradiesischen Insel längst gesichert ist? Was verraten Ton, Schlüsselwörter und Grammatik der großen Romane des 19. Jahrhunderts über den Geist des Kapitalismus? Und was haben uns die Stücke Ibsens heute, das heißt in unseren postbürgerlichen Zeiten, noch zu sagen, in denen die Wachstumsideologie ebenso hinterfragt wird wie die Integrität von Bankern, Beratern und Analysten?