The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning

by Deidre Shauna Lynch

Book Overview

At the start of the eighteenth century, talk of literary "characters" referred as much to letters and typefaces as it did to persons in books. Yet by the nineteenth century, characters had become the equals of their readers, friends with whom readers might spend time and empathize.

Although the story of this shift is usually told in terms of the "rise of the individual," Deidre Shauna Lynch proposes an ingenious alternative interpretation...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226498204
• ISBN13: 9780226498201
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.1"