LEADER 04703nam 2200757 a 450 001 9910463882203321 005 20211005023735.0 010 $a1-283-89700-8 010 $a0-8122-0521-9 024 7 $a10.9783/9780812205213 035 $a(CKB)3240000000065365 035 $a(OCoLC)822017886 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10642676 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000631126 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11420405 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000631126 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10591902 035 $a(PQKB)10592679 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3441924 035 $a(OCoLC)793012721 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse17962 035 $a(DE-B1597)449488 035 $a(OCoLC)979740937 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780812205213 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3441924 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10642676 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL420950 035 $a(EXLCZ)993240000000065365 100 $a20110606d2012 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aKnowing books$b[electronic resource] $ethe consciousness of mediation in eighteenth-century Britain /$fChristina Lupton 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aPhiladelphia $cUniversity of Pennsylvania Press$dc2012 215 $a1 online resource (199 p.) 225 0 $aMaterial Texts 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 0 $a0-8122-4238-6 311 0 $a0-8122-4372-2 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tPrologue --$tIntroduction. Giving Power to the Medium --$tChapter 1. Powerlessness as Entertainment --$tChapter 2. What It-Narratives Know About Their Authors --$tChapter 3. The Theory of Paper --$tChapter 4. Sermons Written on the Screen of Print --$tChapter 5. Gray and Mackenzie Printing on the Wall --$tNotes --$tBibliography --$tIndex --$tAcknowledgments 330 $aThe eighteenth century has long been associated with realism and objective description, modes of representation that deemphasize writing. But in the middle decades of the century, Christina Lupton observes, authors described with surprising candor the material and economic facets of their own texts' production. In Knowing Books Lupton examines a variety of eighteenth-century sources, including sermons, graffiti, philosophical texts, and magazines, which illustrate the range and character of mid-century experiments with words announcing their status as physical objects. Books that "know" their own presence on the page and in the reader's hand become, in Lupton's account, tantalizing objects whose entertainment value competes with that of realist narrative.Knowing Books introduces these mid-eighteenth-century works as part of a long history of self-conscious texts being greeted as fashionable objects. Poststructuralist and Marxist approaches to literature celebrate the consciousness of writing and economic production as belonging to revolutionary understandings of the world, but authors of the period under Lupton's gaze expose the facts of mediation without being revolutionary. On the contrary, their explication of economic and material processes shores up their claim to material autonomy and economic success. Lupton uses media theory and close reading to suggest the desire of eighteenth-century readers to attribute sentience to technologies and objects that entertain them. Rather than a historical study of print technology, Knowing Books offers a humanist interpretation of the will to cede agency to media. This horizon of theoretical engagement makes Knowing Books at once an account of the least studied decades of the eighteenth century and a work of relevance for those interested in new attitudes toward media in the twenty-first. 410 0$aMaterial texts. 606 $aEnglish literature$y18th century$xHistory and criticism$xTheory, etc 606 $aMediation in literature 606 $aSelf-consciousness (Awareness) in literature 606 $aLiterature publishing$zGreat Britain$xHistory$y18th century 606 $aBooks and reading$zGreat Britain$xHistory$y18th century 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aEnglish literature$xHistory and criticism$xTheory, etc. 615 0$aMediation in literature. 615 0$aSelf-consciousness (Awareness) in literature. 615 0$aLiterature publishing$xHistory 615 0$aBooks and reading$xHistory 676 $a820.9/005 700 $aLupton$b Christina$01033393 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910463882203321 996 $aKnowing books$92451910 997 $aUNINA