Böcker av Kevin McLaughlin

This book argues that the theory of force elaborated in Immanuel Kant's aesthetics (and in particular, his theorization of the dynamic sublime) is of decisive importance to poetry in the nineteenth century and to the connection between poetry and philosophy over the last two centuries. Inspired by his deep engagement with the critical theory of Walter Benjamin, who especially developed this Kantian strain of thinking, Kevin McLaughlin uses this theory of force to illuminate the work of three of the most influential nineteenth-century writers in their respective national traditions: Friedrich Holderlin, Charles Baudelaire, and Matthew Arnold. The result is a fine elucidation of Kantian theory and a fresh account of poetic language and its aesthetic, ethical, and political possibilities.

Proposing a new interpretation of literature and mass culture in nineteenth-century Europe, this book focuses on works by Marx, Balzac, Dickens, Adorno, and Benjamin to explore in them a complex "mimetic" disposition toward commodification in the realm of culture.

Paperwork challenges traditional approaches to print culture and the mass media in the nineteenth century. Kevin McLaughlin argues for a literary-critical approach to the impact of the mass media on literature through a series of detailed interpretations of fiction by Poe, Stevenson, Melville, Dickens, and Hardy.