Sensationalism and the Genealogy of Modernity : a global nineteenth- century perspective

This book maps out the temporal and geographic coordinates of the trope of sensationalism in the long nineteenth century through a comparative approach. Not only juxtaposing different geographical areas (Europe, Asia and Oceania), this volume also disperses its history over a __longue durée__, allowing readers to perceive the hidden and often unacknowledged continuities throughout a period that is often reduced to the confines of the national disciplines of literature, art, and cultural studies. Providing a wide range of methodological approaches from the fields of literary studies, art history, sociology of literature, and visual culture, this collection offers indispensable examples of the relation between literature and several other media. Topics include the rhetorical tropes of popular culture, the material culture of clothing, the lived experience of performance as a sub-text of literature and painting, and the redefinition of spatiality and temporality in theory, art, and literature. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction: Sensationalism and the Genealogy of Modernity: Transnational Currents, Intermedial Trajectories—A Global Nineteenth-Century Approach....Pages 1-25 Front Matter....Pages 27-27 Irony and Popular Politics in Germany, 1800–1850....Pages 29-48 The Horror of Clothing and the Clothing of Horror: Material and Meaning in Gothic and Sensation Fiction....Pages 49-68 Adelaide, Sensationalism and the Development of New Journalism in the Early History of the South Australian Press....Pages 69-94 Urban Perils and the Sensational Bicycle: Text-Image Dynamics in the Victorian Magazine Cycling, 1894–1896....Pages 95-117 Front Matter....Pages 119-119 Destructive Re-Creations: Spectacles of Urban Destruction in Turn-of-the-Century USA....Pages 121-141 The Magician’s Box of Tricks: Fantômas, Popular Literature, and the Spectacular Imagination....Pages 143-162 Sawing People in Half: Sensationalist Magic Tricks and the Role of Women on Stage in the Early Twentieth Century....Pages 163-191 Sensational Voices: Premodern Theatricality, Early Cinema, and the Transformation of the Public Sphere in Fin-de-siècle Vienna....Pages 193-214 Front Matter....Pages 215-215 The Whole Thing (and Other Things): From Panorama to Attraction in Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” Ashcan Painting, and Early Cinema....Pages 217-238 Urban Metaphysics versus Metropolitan Dynamisms: The Italian Vision Before the First World War....Pages 239-256 Spatiality and Temporality in Benjamin and Adorno....Pages 257-276 The Sensibilities of Semicolonial Shanghai: A Phenomenological Study of the Short Stories by Liu Na’ou....Pages 277-296 Back Matter....Pages 297-309 This book maps out the temporal and geographic coordinates of the trope of sensationalism in the long nineteenth century through a comparative approach. Not only juxtaposing different geographical areas (Europe, Asia and Oceania), this volume also disperses its history over a longue durée, allowing readers to perceive the hidden and often unacknowledged continuities throughout a period that is often reduced to the confines of the national disciplines of literature, art, and cultural studies. Providing a wide range of methodological approaches from the fields of literary studies, art history, sociology of literature, and visual culture, this collection offers indispensable examples of the relation between literature and several other media. Topics include the rhetorical tropes of popular culture, the material culture of clothing, the lived experience of performance as a sub-text of literature and painting, and the redefinition of spatiality and temporality in theory, art, and literature.-- Provided by Publisher