From Patronage to the Mass Market: Institutionalizing Literary Knowledge Cultures in the 19th-Century United States

从赞助到大众市场：十九世纪美国文学知识文化的制度化

• 批准号: 522842143
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Philipp Löffler
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Anglistisches Seminar
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/522842143?language=en
• 关键词: Patronage; Mass; Market; Institutionalizing; Literary

This collaborative research project investigates the nexus between sites of institutionalized knowledge and central developments within 19th-century American literature. The project circumnavigates more traditional forms of literary periodization in that it focuses on the multiple connections between a gradually professionalized book market, facilities of higher learning, and modes of cultural patronage. This perspective results in a twofold research agenda. On the one hand, the project seeks to trace the emergence and diversification of US-American literary nationalism by looking at the institutional conditions that allowed, promoted, and prohibited literary participation in the US throughout the 19th century. American literature gained relevance and cultural authority whenever authors could partake in and profit from state-sponsored or private forms of patronage. Literary authority often resulted directly from socio-institutional modes of protection that occurred at the interface of education, knowledge, and commerce. On the other hand, the project combines sociological approaches within contemporary literary studies in the wake of the so-called ‘institutional turn’ with historically and epistemologically oriented scholarship. That way, the dynamics of literary professionalization that shaped larger parts of 19th-century US literature will appear related more directly to forms of cultural knowledge and their institutional settings. In order to illustrate the practical consequences of this approach, the proposed subprojects center around two specific fields of literary activity, one situated in the 1810s and 1820s, the second at around the turn of the 19th century. At the center of the first field stands the Massachusetts Institution, a state-sponsored corporation of libraries, museums, and professional organizations through which American-born authors were to be supported in their endeavors to produce nationally specific literature. Studying the attempts to establish this network of facilities and sponsors will shed light on the intimate relationship between politics and culture that prepared many of the more extensively researched discourses of literary nationalism in the 1830s and 1840s. The second field of inquiry is devoted to forms of literary knowledge that took shape in and through mass-marketed periodicals at the end of the 19th century, among them The Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Munsey's, McClure's und The Colored American Magazine. These periodicals had a broad target audience and catered in particular to a growing „professional-managerial class“ which used these venues as a means of cultural and commercial self-authorization. The analysis of this novel print public is less-directly related to singular canonical literary practitioners and is instead meant to uncover under-researched genres, styles, and formats of writing that fueled the professionalization of the literary field through their circulation in these magazines.

这个合作研究项目调查了19世纪美国文学中制度化知识和中心发展之间的联系。该项目绕过了更传统的文学分期形式，重点关注逐渐专业化的图书市场、高等教育设施和文化赞助模式之间的多重联系。这种观点导致了双重研究议程。一方面，该项目试图通过考察整个19世纪美国允许、促进和禁止文学参与的制度条件，来追溯美国文学民族主义的出现和多样化。只要作者能够参与国家赞助或私人赞助并从中获利，美国文学就能获得相关性和文化权威。文学权威往往直接产生于教育、知识和商业交界处的社会制度保护模式。另一方面，在所谓的“制度转向”之后，该项目将当代文学研究中的社会学方法与历史和认识论导向的学术结合起来。这样，塑造了19世纪美国文学大部分的文学专业化的动力将与文化知识的形式及其制度设置更直接地相关。为了说明这种方法的实际后果，提议的子项目围绕两个特定的文学活动领域，一个位于1810年代和1820年代，第二个在19世纪之交。在第一个领域的中心是麻省学院，这是一个由国家资助的图书馆、博物馆和专业组织组成的公司，通过它，美国出生的作家将得到支持，以努力创作具有本国特色的文学作品。研究建立这一设施和赞助者网络的尝试，将揭示政治与文化之间的亲密关系，这种关系为19世纪30年代和40年代文学民族主义的许多更广泛研究的话语奠定了基础。第二个研究领域致力于19世纪末在大众市场期刊中形成的文学知识形式，其中包括《妇女家庭杂志》、《Cosmopolitan》、《Munsey’s》、《McClure’s》和《有色人种美国杂志》。这些期刊有广泛的目标读者，并特别迎合日益增长的“专业管理阶层”，他们利用这些场所作为文化和商业自我授权的手段。对这些小说的分析与单一的经典文学实践者没有直接的关系，而是为了揭示那些通过在这些杂志上的流通推动文学领域专业化的未被研究的体裁、风格和写作形式。