Böcker av John Plotz

"Semi-detachment--the state of simultaneous half-waking and half-dreaming--proves just the sort of big, loose idea that in the hands of a playful and curious reader like Plotz gives us fresh insight into the mind's uneven engagements with the real. This book offers a fascinating exploration of how the late realist novel reflects on that special kind of doubled (in)attention--and invites its readers to do so too."--Elizabeth Helsinger, University of Chicago"John Plotz's exciting and wide-ranging book names, explores, and traces the genealogy of a familiar yet undertheorized feature of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature: an aesthetic of 'semi-detachment.' Plotz has established himself as one of the most important critics in his field, and this book will clearly be a major contribution. Its scholarship is extraordinary, its writing is elegant and effective, and its argument is new and exciting."--Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, University of California, Davis"Semi-Detached tells the history of an aesthetic experience--semi-detachment--that is produced and described by artworks across the nineteenth century, from the romantic era to early Hollywood. This unusually confident and engrossing book, at once magisterial and experimental, sweeps across major arcs of aesthetic philosophy and literary history, but also attends to fine textual details. Plotz is a skilled, veteran scholar working at the top of his game."--Jed Esty, University of Pennsylvania

A book on the experience of reading Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels that celebrates Le Guin's monumental worldbuilding achievement recaptures the glories of childhood reading.

Between 1800 and 1850, political demonstrations and the tumult of a ballooning street life not only brought novel kinds of crowds onto the streets of London, but also fundamentally changed British ideas about public and private space. This book demonstrates the influence of these crowds, riots, and demonstrations on the period's literature.

What fueled the Victorian passion for hair-jewelry and memorial rings? When would an everyday object metamorphose from commodity to precious relic? In Portable Property, John Plotz examines the new role played by portable objects in persuading Victorian Britons that they could travel abroad with religious sentiments, family ties, and national identity intact. In an empire defined as much by the circulation of capital as by force of arms, the challenge of preserving Englishness while living overseas became a central Victorian preoccupation, creating a pressing need for objects that could readily travel abroad as personifications of Britishness. At the same time a radically new relationship between cash value and sentimental associations arose in certain resonant mementoes--in teacups, rings, sprigs of heather, and handkerchiefs, but most of all in books. Portable Property examines how culture-bearing objects came to stand for distant people and places, creating or preserving a sense of self and community despite geographic dislocation. Victorian novels--because they themselves came to be understood as the quintessential portable property--tell the story of this change most clearly. Plotz analyzes a wide range of works, paying particular attention to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, Anthony Trollope's Eustace Diamonds, and R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone. He also discusses Thomas Hardy and William Morris's vehement attack on the very notion of cultural portability. The result is a richer understanding of the role of objects in British culture at home and abroad during the Age of Empire.