Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Note on Sources (p. xi)
• Introduction: Concepts and Contradictions
• 1 'I am a member of the bourgeois class' (p. 1)
• 2 Dissonances (p. 4)
• 3 Bourgeoisie, middle class (p. 6)
• 4 Between history and literature (p. 12)
• 5 Abstract hero (p. 15)
• 6 Prose and keywords: preliminary remarks (p. 17)
• 7 'The bourgeois is lost...' (p. 19)
• I A Working Master
• 1 Adventure, enterprise, Fortuna (p. 25)
• 2 'This will testify for me that I was not idle' (p. 29)
• 3 Keywords I: 'Useful' (p. 35)
• 4 Keywords II: 'Efficiency' (p. 39)
• 5 Keywords III: 'Comfort' (p. 44)
• 6 Prose I: 'The rhythm of continuity' (p. 51)
• 7 Prose II: 'We have discovered the productivity of the spirit...' (p. 58)
• II Serious Century
• 1 Keywords IV: 'Serious' (p. 67)
• 2 Fillers (p. 74)
• 3 Rationalization (p. 79)
• 4 Prose III: Reality principle (p. 83)
• 5 Description, conservatism, Realpolitik (p. 89)
• 6 Prose IV: 'A transposition of the objective into the subjective' (p. 94)
• III Fog
• 1 Naked, shameless, and direct (p. 101)
• 2 'Behind the veil' (p. 108)
• 3 The Gothic, un déjà-là (p. 112)
• 4 The gentleman (p. 116)
• 5 Keywords V: 'Influence' (p. 120)
• 6 Prose V: Victorian adjectives (p. 125)
• 7 Keywords VI: 'Earnest' (p. 131)
• 8 'Who loves not Knowledge?' (p. 135)
• 9 Prose VI: Fog (p. 141)
• IV 'National Malformations': Metamorphoses in the Semi-Periphery
• 1 Balzac, Machado, and money (p. 145)
• 2 Keywords VII: 'Roba' (p. 149)
• 3 Persistence of the Old Regime I: The Doll (p. 156)
• 4 Persistence of the Old Regime II: Torquemada (p. 160)
• 5 'There's arithmetic for you!' (p. 164)
• V Ibsen and the Spirit of Capitalism
• 1 The grey area (p. 169)
• 2 'Signs against signs' (p. 174)
• 3 Bourgeois prose, capitalist poetry (p. 179)
• Illustration Credits (p. 189)
• Index (p. 191)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Moretti (literature, Stanford Univ.; Signs Taken for Wonders) examines the notion of the 19th-century "bourgeois," their middle-class values, and well-known works such as Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as well as lesser-known novels such as Dinah Craik's 1856 John Halifax, Gentleman. He also investigates how diction changed through the 19th century as seen in the novels' characters. Added is the expertise of theorists Georg Lukacs and Max Weber, among others, and the analysis of literary databases and proper use of encoded text employed in the digital humanities. For instance, Moretti acknowledges the rise of free indirect style, the subjugation of the subjective, the emergence of description in 19th-century literature as a signifier for "reality," and makes the worthy observation that "bourgeois" style balances a line between comedy and tragedy. Moretti's style works for philosophically minded readers and yet remains a bit slippery owing to its deferment of meaning-a deferment amplified by Moretti's questionable connection of "bourgeois" to "middle class." VERDICT This work is history and literary criticism steeped in a social consciousness for readers who love language and the granularity of word play and for hard-working thinkers.-Jesse A. Lambertson, Arlington P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

First named in the 11th century, the bourgeois class established a dominant presence in world literature starting in the 1700s, as this brief but incisive critical study indicates. Starting with Robinson Crusoe, Moretti shows how conservative middle-class values and their incarnation in character types began to appear in fiction and poetry, shaping the structure of narrative. Crusoe, a model of human industry and the nascent capitalist spirit, sees his island world only in terms of what is "useful" to his endeavors. Moretti dissects Defoe's grammar and syntax, finding it consistent with the efficiency of Crusoe's character: "Defoe's sentences take the successful ending of an action... and turn it into the premise for another action." Looking to Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, Madame Bovary, and other 19th-century classics, Moretti sees novels dominated by "fillers"-details of daily life that convey a sense of "regularity"-and descriptions that are increasingly "analytical, impersonal, perhaps even 'impartial.' " Moretti buttresses his argument with observations from Weber, Lukacs, Gramsci, and other theorists, and extends his study to the novels of Machado, Galdos, Prus, and others. Moretti persuasively demonstrates that his interpretations can be applied broadly to the vast body of 18th- and 19th-century literature. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Moretti (literature, Stanford) brought digital analysis into the foreground in his previous publications, and he continues this task in the present endeavor. He provides a sweeping analysis of bourgeois identity and culture by applying informing key ords and prosaic themes in consort with their mutations as reflected in numerous literary works, extending even to their grammatical constructs and semantic associations. The author admits to the ambiguity embedded in the term "bourgeois"--its meaning adapts in consort with the changing fortunes of capitalism--but he ably demonstrates its variability and buttresses his argument with literary vignettes interlaced with commentary from economic historians and literary critics. As exempla, Moretti uses Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and the plays of Henrik Ibsen. His chapter on the "fog" of Victorian sentimentalism, in its reach for moral hegemony over unleashed capitalism, is sheer brilliance. He finds an intriguing parallel, teasingly undeveloped, between the bowdlerization of Victorian literature and the superficiality of modern American culture with its anti-intellectualism, sports, and television addiction. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. R. R. Joly emeritus, Asbury University

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