1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910783798703321

Autore

Swirski Peter <1963->

Titolo

From lowbrow to nobrow [[electronic resource] /] / Peter Swirski

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Montréal, Que., : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2005

ISBN

1-282-86385-1

9786612863851

0-7735-7324-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (232 p.)

Disciplina

809.3/04

Soggetti

Popular literature - History and criticism

Fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-216) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Contents -- Introduction: Books Without Frontiers -- Lowbrow: Positions and Oppositions -- Facts and Popular Fictions -- Towards Nobrow Aesthetics -- Genres and Paradoxes -- Nobrow: Varie Ties of Artertainment -- Karel Èapek and the Politics of Memory -- Raymond Chandler’s Aesthetics of Irony -- Stanislaw Lem and the Art of Science -- Conclusion: Whose Art? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Swirski begins with a series of groundbreaking questions about the nature of popular fiction, vindicating it as an artform that expresses and reflects the aesthetic and social values of its readers. He follows his insightful introduction to the socio-aesthetics of genre literature with a synthesis of the century long debate on the merits of popular fiction and a study of genre informed by analytic aesthetics and game theory. Swirski then turns to three "nobrow" novels that have been largely ignored by critics. Examining the aesthetics of "artertainment" in Karel Capek's War with the Newts, Raymond Chandler's Playback, and Stanislaw Lem's Chain of Chance, crossover tours de force, From Lowbrow to Nobrow throws new light on the hazards and rewards of nobrow traffic between popular forms and highbrow aesthetics.