Social Science Popular Culture
From Lowbrow to Nobrow
- Publisher
- McGill-Queen's University Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2005
- Category
- Popular Culture, Canadian
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780773529922
- Publish Date
- Oct 2005
- List Price
- $125.00
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780773530195
- Publish Date
- Oct 2005
- List Price
- $34.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780773573246
- Publish Date
- Oct 2005
- List Price
- $24.95
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Description
Swirski begins with a series of groundbreaking questions about the nature of popular fiction, vindicating it as an artform that expresses and reflects the aesthetic and social values of its readers. He follows his insightful introduction to the socio-aesthetics of genre literature with a synthesis of the century long debate on the merits of popular fiction and a study of genre informed by analytic aesthetics and game theory. Swirski then turns to three "nobrow" novels that have been largely ignored by critics. Examining the aesthetics of "artertainment" in Karel Capek's War with the Newts, Raymond Chandler's Playback, and Stanislaw Lem's Chain of Chance, crossover tours de force, From Lowbrow to Nobrow throws new light on the hazards and rewards of nobrow traffic between popular forms and highbrow aesthetics.
About the author
Peter Swirski is professor of American literature and culture at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis and former research director at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He is the author of twelve books, including Ars Americana, Ars Politica: Partisan Expression in Contemporary American Literature and Culture.
Other titles by
Lemography
From Literature to Biterature
Lem, Turing, Darwin, and Explorations in Computer Literature, Philosophy of Mind, and Cultural Evolution
Ars Americana, Ars Politica
Partisan Expression in Contemporary American Literature and Culture
I Sing the Body Politic
History as Prophecy in Contemporary American Literature
The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem
Between Literature and Science
Poe, Lem and Explorations in Aesthetics, Cognitive Science, and Literary Knowledge