Boredom: The Literary History of a State of MindUniversity of Chicago Press, 1995 - 290 pages 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. |
Contents
READING WRITING AND BOREDOM | 1 |
VACUITY SATIETY AND THE ACTIVE LIFE | 31 |
3 THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE DULL | 60 |
5 A DULL BOOK IS EASILY RENOUNCED | 129 |
THE NORMALIZATION OF BOREDOM | 164 |
SOCIETY AND ITS DISCONTENTS | 191 |
THE ETHICS OF BOREDOM | 218 |
CULTURAL MIASMA | 249 |
| 273 | |
| 281 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action activity amusement appears Austen Becky Sharp becomes Birkin Bleak House bored boredom Boswell Carbury Cecilia century characters claim Coelebs condition consciousness constitutes cultural Daniel Deronda declares Dedlock Delany desire dull eighteenth eighteenth-century Elinor Emma emotional engage ennui entertainment ethical experience external feeling female fiction Frances Burney Grandcourt Grandison Gwendolen happiness Harthouse Helen human Humboldt's Gift imagination implicit implicitly implies importance inherent insists instance inter interest involves Isabel Johnson kind lack Lady Dedlock's leisure letters literary lives Lucy Marianne marriage marry Mary Delany meaning mind modern moral narcissism narrative narrator nature never nineteenth-century notion novel novelists observes occupation Osmond pleasure plot possibility postmodern problem provides psychic psychological Rasselas readers reading rejection response reveals rience Robert Elsmere sense Sense and Sensibility Sir Charles social story suffering suggests tedious tedium tells things tion twentieth-century Vanity Fair virtue woman women word writing young