Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System Tapa dura - 1999 - 1st Edición
de Bernhard Siegert; Kevin Repp (Translator)
Primera línea
After he had spent a lifetime writing letters and piling up grievance upon grievance, the moment came when the words ceased lamenting in order to become "generally instructive" remarks-when the love letters stopped in order to make room for a theory of the postal system.
Descripción de la solapa
This book examines how one aspect of the social and technological situation of literature--namely, the postal system--determined how literature was produced and what was produced within literature. Language itself has the structure of a relay, where what is transmitted depends on a prior withholding. The social arrangements and technologies for achieving this transmission thus have had a particularly powerful impact on the imagination of literature as a medium.
The book has three parts. The first part reconstructs the postal conditions of classic and Romantic literature: the invention of postage in the seventeenth century, which transformed the postal system into a service meant to be used by the population (instead of by the prince alone); the sexualization of letter writing, which was introduced in the middle of the eighteenth century and changed the reading of a letter into an interpretation of intimate confessions of the soul; and Goethe's turning of this new ontology of the letter into a logistics of literature whereby literary authorship was constructed by means of postal logistics, with the precision of engineering.
The second part analyzes nineteenth-century postal innovations that facilitated communication through letters and examines how literary works were able to live off such communication. These innovations included the reform of the post office; the invention of the postage stamp; the Universal Postal Union, which subjected letter writing to an economy of materials and uniform standards; and the telegraph and the telephone, which surpassed literature in terms of speed, economy, and analog-signal processing.
In the third part, on the basis of a close reading of Franz Kafka's letters to his typist-fiancee, the author demonstrates how postal logistics of love and authorship have worked in the era of modern postal systems and technical media. Kafka's correspondence is deciphered as a "war of nerves" waged by means of all available techniques and conditions of transmission.
Detalles
- Título Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System
- Autor Bernhard Siegert; Kevin Repp (Translator)
- Encuadernación Tapa dura
- Número de edición 1st
- Edición 1
- Páginas 340
- Volúmenes 1
- Idioma ENG
- Editorial Stanford University Press
- Fecha de publicación June 1, 1999
- Ilustrado Sí
- Features Illustrated
- ISBN 9780804732369 / 0804732361
- Número de catálogo de la Librería del Congreso de EEUU 99021523
- Dewey Decimal Code 836.009
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Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System
de Bernhard Siegert
- Usado
- near fine
- Tapa dura
- Estado
- Usado - Near Fine
- Edición
- Translated from German
- Encuadernación
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
- 9780804732369 / 0804732361
- Cantidad disponible
- 1
- Librería
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Seattle, Washington, United States
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EUR 13.94EUR 4.18 enviando a USA
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Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (Writing Science)
de Siegert, Bernhard
- Usado
- Bien
- Tapa dura
- Estado
- Usado - Bien
- Encuadernación
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
- 9780804732369 / 0804732361
- Cantidad disponible
- 1
- Librería
-
Newport Coast, California, United States
- Precio
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EUR 103.22Envío gratuito a USA