{"product_id":"middlebrow-matters-womens-reading-and-the-literary-canon-in-france-since-the-belle-epoque-9781786941565","title":"Middlebrow Matters: Women's Reading and the Literary Canon in France Since the Belle Époque","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Diana Holmes\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Liverpool University Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Liverpool University Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: European - French\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShortlisted for the 2019 R. Gapper book prize\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, 2018.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis 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 tendency 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 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 �poque, inter-war, early twenty-first century), authors (including Colette, Ir�ne Nemirovsky, Fran�oise 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Liverpool University Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47573792456855,"sku":"9781786941565","price":7942.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781786941565.webp?v=1774893791","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/middlebrow-matters-womens-reading-and-the-literary-canon-in-france-since-the-belle-epoque-9781786941565","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}