Description |
1 online resource (244 pages). |
Series |
Contemporary French and francophone cultures ; 57 |
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Contemporary French and francophone cultures.
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Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [223]-237) and index. |
Summary |
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 Epoque, inter-war, early twenty-first century), authors (including Colette, Irene Nemirovsky, Francoise Sagan, Anna Gavalda) and the middlebrow nature of literary prizes. |
Note |
This work is licensed by Knowledge Unlatched under a Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode |
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode |
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Print version record. |
Subject |
Feminism in literature.
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French fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.
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French fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Social classes in literature.
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Women and literature -- France -- History -- 20th century.
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Women -- France -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
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Feminism in literature. (OCoLC)fst00922752
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French fiction -- Women authors.
(OCoLC)fst00934321
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French fiction. (OCoLC)fst00934302
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Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers.
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Literature.
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Social classes in literature. (OCoLC)fst01122375
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Women and literature. (OCoLC)fst01177093
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Women -- Social conditions.
(OCoLC)fst01176947
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France. (OCoLC)fst01204289
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Chronological Term |
1900-1999
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Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc. (OCoLC)fst01411635
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History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
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Other Form: |
Print version: Holmes, Diana, 1949- Middlebrow matters. Liverpool Liverpool University Press 2018 1786941562 (OCoLC)1033530958 |
ISBN |
1786941562 (electronic book) |
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1786949520 (electronic book) |
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9781786941565 (electronic book) |
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9781786949523 (electronic book) |
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1786941562 |
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