Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind

Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind
ISBN-10
0226768546
ISBN-13
9780226768540
Series
Boredom
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
290
Language
English
Published
1996-06
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Author
Patricia Meyer Spacks

Description

What such a move meant, in society as well as literature, becomes clear in the astonishing range of fiction, poetry, conduct books, letters, and historical and sociological documents Spacks surveys. Here we see how the idea of boredom - as a point of reference or focus of opposition, as a means of characterization, repudiation, or definition, as social indictment or personal grievance - condenses a wide range of crucial meanings and attitudes. From the gendering of boredom (how women's lives came to embody both the threat of boredom and its overthrow) to canon issues (how "boring" becomes "interesting" with a sympathetic reader), the implications of the subject steadily enlarge.

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