Serial Policization: On the cultural Work of American City Mysteries

系列政治化：论美国城市之谜的文化工作

• 批准号: 240369024
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Daniel Stein
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Seminar für Anglistik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2012-12-31 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/240369024?language=en
• 关键词: Serial; Policization; cultural; Work; American

The success of European feuilleton novels (Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris, 1842- 1843; George Reynolds, The Mysteries of London, 1844-1846) spawned a new American popular genre: the city mysteries, written between 1844 and 1860 by authors such as George Lippard, Ned Buntline, George Thompson, and Osgood Bradbury. Their thematic concerns and media practices positioned these series as influential players of (and within) an emergent American popular culture in the antebellum era. Utilizing sensationalistic and melodramatic techniques, the city mysteries made a case for social reform at an explicitly national level, thus contributing to the self-reflections of a rapidly modernizing and territorially expanding society. Their thematic repertoire comprised urbanization as fascination and threat, the fate of republican and regional-democratic ideals in a nationalized public sphere, the relationship of populist agitation and party corruption, the exploitation of the working class by powerful capitalists, etc. However, these critical negotiations of antebellum modernity relied on a media practice that itself was essentially modern, viz. serial, commercial, and transregionally active, and that can therefore be seen as an important origin of popular-serial culture in the United States. The subproject views the city mystery genre as an influential actor within a dynamic network of cultural practices. It investigates (1) an early form of popular seriality at the moment of its explicit advocacy of an imagined national community, holding (2) that, due to their serial production, distribution, and reception, city mysteries not only represent the conflicts of their era but make politics (possible): they structure the field of political agency and participate in the genesis and reproduction of practical politics in the decades before the Civil War. The subproject thus investigates the politicizing dynamics of popular seriality, i.e. the interconnections between serial genre development and modern practices of the political (translocal and transregional party organization, forms of publicity, agitation, etc.), focusing on a compelling but hitherto understudied textual corpus of American literature. Within the architecture of the Research Unit, the subproject works as a synchronic complement to TP-HG2 (German periodicals, 1850-1890), allowing for a transnational comparison of nineteenth-century serial narrative forms, strategies, and political functions. Diachronically, it provides a historical basis for TP-HG3 (film serials, 1910-1940), especially concerning the role of serial narrative structures for the self-thematization of an American "mass culture." Building on TP4, it investigates how popular series offer differentiated role identities to a diffuse (mass) audience. Moreover, it follows TP5 (on serial one-upmanship) by analyzing serial competition not only at the textual and generic levels but also at the level of political positions. Finally, it reconstructs the prehistory of pulp novels (Heftromane), a serial form analyzed in TP6 and TP7.

欧洲短篇小说的成功（欧格伦·苏的《巴黎的奥秘》，1842- 1843年；乔治·雷诺兹的《伦敦之谜》，1844-1846年）催生了一种新的美国流行类型：城市推理小说，由乔治·利帕德、内德·邦特兰、乔治·汤普森和奥斯古德·布拉德伯里等作家在1844年至1860年之间创作。他们的主题关注和媒体实践将这些系列定位为在内战前时代新兴的美国流行文化中有影响力的角色。利用耸人听闻和情节剧的技巧，城市之谜在明确的国家层面上提出了社会改革的案例，从而有助于对快速现代化和领土扩张的社会的自我反思。他们的主题包括城市化的魅力和威胁，共和和地区民主理想在国有化公共领域的命运，民粹主义煽动和政党腐败的关系，强大的资本家对工人阶级的剥削等等。然而，这些战前现代性的关键谈判依赖于一种媒体实践，这种媒体实践本身本质上是现代的，即连续剧、商业和跨地区的活跃，因此可以被视为美国流行连续剧文化的重要起源。子项目将城市悬疑类型视为动态文化实践网络中的一个有影响力的演员。它调查了(1)在它明确倡导一个想象的国家共同体的时候，流行的一种早期形式，认为(2)由于它们的系列生产、发行和接收，城市神秘小说不仅代表了他们时代的冲突，而且使政治（成为可能）：它们构建了政治代理领域，并参与了内战前几十年实际政治的起源和再生产。因此，该子项目研究了流行连篇的政治化动态，即连篇体例发展与现代政治实践（跨地方和跨地区的政党组织、宣传形式、煽动等）之间的相互联系，重点关注引人注目但迄今尚未得到充分研究的美国文学文本语料库。在研究单位的架构内，子项目作为TP-HG2（德国期刊，1850-1890）的同步补充，允许对19世纪系列叙事形式，策略和政治功能进行跨国比较。在历时上，它为TP-HG3（1910-1940年系列电影）提供了历史基础，特别是关于系列叙事结构对美国“大众文化”自我主题化的作用。在TP4的基础上，它调查了受欢迎的电视剧如何为分散的（大众）观众提供不同的角色身份。此外，本文继TP5之后，不仅分析了文本和一般层面上的系列竞争，还分析了政治立场层面的系列竞争。最后，对第六章和第七章所分析的系列小说形式——低俗小说的前世史进行了重构。

项目成果

15. Transatlantic Politics as Serial Networks in the German-American City Mystery Novel, 1850–1855

15 德美城市悬疑小说中作为连续网络的跨大西洋政治，1850 年至 1855 年

• DOI: 10.1515/9783110411744-016
• 发表时间: 2016
• 作者: Daniel