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Social Science Popular Culture

From Lowbrow to Nobrow

by (author) Peter Swirski

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2005
Category
Popular Culture
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773529922
    Publish Date
    Oct 2005
    List Price
    $110.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773530195
    Publish Date
    Oct 2005
    List Price
    $34.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773573246
    Publish Date
    Oct 2005
    List Price
    $28.95

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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.

Peter Swirski's profile page