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Site Reading : Fiction, Art, Social Form / David J. Alworth.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2016Edition: Pilot project. eBook available to selected US libraries onlyDescription: 1 online resource : 16 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691183343
  • 9781400873807
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 809.922 23
LOC classification:
  • PN56.S48
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction: The Site of the Social -- 1. Supermarket Sociology (Don Delillo, Andy Warhol) -- Test Sites -- 2. Dumps (William S. Burroughs, Mierle Laderman Ukeles) -- 3. Roads (Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, John Chamberlain) -- 4. Ruins (Thomas Pynchon, Robert Smithson) -- 5. Asylums (Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, Jeff Wall) -- Afterword: Site Unseen -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Site Reading offers a new method of literary and cultural interpretation and a new theory of narrative setting by examining five sites-supermarkets, dumps, roads, ruins, and asylums-that have been crucial to American literature and visual art since the mid-twentieth century. Against the traditional understanding of setting as a static background for narrative action and character development, David Alworth argues that sites figure in novels as social agents. Engaging a wide range of social and cultural theorists, especially Bruno Latour and Erving Goffman, Site Reading examines how the literary figuration of real, material environments reorients our sense of social relations. To read the sites of fiction, Alworth demonstrates, is to reveal literature as a profound sociological resource, one that simultaneously models and theorizes collective life.Each chapter identifies a particular site as a point of contact for writers and artists-the supermarket for Don DeLillo and Andy Warhol; the dump for William Burroughs and Mierle Laderman Ukeles; the road for Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, and John Chamberlain; the ruin for Thomas Pynchon and Robert Smithson; and the asylum for Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, and Jeff Wall-and shows how this site mediates complex interactions among humans and nonhumans. The result is an interdisciplinary study of American culture that brings together literature, visual art, and social theory to develop a new sociology of literature that emphasizes the sociology in literature.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400873807

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction: The Site of the Social -- 1. Supermarket Sociology (Don Delillo, Andy Warhol) -- Test Sites -- 2. Dumps (William S. Burroughs, Mierle Laderman Ukeles) -- 3. Roads (Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, John Chamberlain) -- 4. Ruins (Thomas Pynchon, Robert Smithson) -- 5. Asylums (Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, Jeff Wall) -- Afterword: Site Unseen -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Site Reading offers a new method of literary and cultural interpretation and a new theory of narrative setting by examining five sites-supermarkets, dumps, roads, ruins, and asylums-that have been crucial to American literature and visual art since the mid-twentieth century. Against the traditional understanding of setting as a static background for narrative action and character development, David Alworth argues that sites figure in novels as social agents. Engaging a wide range of social and cultural theorists, especially Bruno Latour and Erving Goffman, Site Reading examines how the literary figuration of real, material environments reorients our sense of social relations. To read the sites of fiction, Alworth demonstrates, is to reveal literature as a profound sociological resource, one that simultaneously models and theorizes collective life.Each chapter identifies a particular site as a point of contact for writers and artists-the supermarket for Don DeLillo and Andy Warhol; the dump for William Burroughs and Mierle Laderman Ukeles; the road for Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, and John Chamberlain; the ruin for Thomas Pynchon and Robert Smithson; and the asylum for Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, and Jeff Wall-and shows how this site mediates complex interactions among humans and nonhumans. The result is an interdisciplinary study of American culture that brings together literature, visual art, and social theory to develop a new sociology of literature that emphasizes the sociology in literature.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)