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This is the first book to study the middlebrow novel in France. Middlebrow is a derogatory word that connotes blandness, mediocrity and a failed aspiration to "high" culture. However, when appropriated as a positive term to denote that wide swathe of literature between the challenging experimentalism of the high and the formulaic drive of the popular, it enables a rethinking of the literary canon from the point of view of what most readers actually read, a criterion curiously absent from dominant definitions of literary value. Since women have long formed a majority of the nation's reading public, this perspective immediately feminises what has always been a very male canon. Opening with a theorisation of the concept of middlebrow that mounts a defence of some literary qualities disdained by modernism, the book then focuses on a series of case studies of periods (the Belle Époque, inter-war, early twenty-first century), authors (including Colette, Irène Nemirovsky, Françoise Sagan, Anna Gavalda) and the middlebrow nature of literary prizes. It concludes with a double reading of a single text, from the perspective of an academic critic, and from that of a middlebrow reader.
| ISBN-13 | 9781786941565 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 1786941562 |
| Weight | 1.15 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.30 x 0.90 x 6.30 In |
| List Price | $66.00 |
| Format | Hardcover |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Pages | 256 pages |
| Publisher | Liverpool University Press |
| Published On | 2019-01-01 |
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