Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind

by Patricia Meyer Spacks

Overview

This book offers a witty explanation of why boredom both haunts and motivates the literary imagination. Moving from Samuel Johnson to Donald Barthelme, from Jane Austen to Anita Brookner, Spacks shows us at last how we arrived in a postmodern world where boredom is the all-encompassing name we give our discontent. Her book, anything but boring, gives us new insight into the cultural usefulness--and deep interest--of boredom as a state of mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226768540
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	06/01/1996
Edition description:	1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Patricia Meyer Spacks is the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of eleven previous books, including Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in Eighteenth-Century English Novels and Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1: Reading, Writing, and Boredom
2: Vacuity, Satiety, and the Active Life: Eighteenth-Century Men
3: The Consciousness of the Dull: Eighteenth-Century Women, Boredom, and
Narrative
4: "Self is a Tiresome Subject": Personal Records of Eighteenth-Century
Women
Interlude: The Problem of the Interesting
5: "A Dull Book is Easily Renounced": How the Interesting Turns Boring
6: The Normalization of Boredom: Nineteenth-Century Women and Their
Fictions
7: Society and Its Discontents: Cultural Contexts of Nineteenth-Century
Boredom
8: The Ethics of Boredom: Modernism and Questions of Value
9: Cultural Miasma: Postmodern Enlargements of Boredom

Editorial Reviews

Offers a witty literary explanation of why boredom, as malady or inspiration, should be as important an issue as it is in our culture. Investigating boredom's imaginative functions since the figure of the "bore" first entered the language in the 18th century, Spacks (English, U. of Virginia) reveals the shifting cultural purposes served by this often lamented state. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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