Sensational Subjects
The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World
Published on 29. January 2015
Book
Hardback
248 pages
978-1-4725-3563-4 (ISBN)
Description
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
Under what conditions does 'sensation' become 'sensational'?
In the early nineteenth century murder was a staple of the sensationalizing popular press and gruesome descriptions were deployed to make a direct impact on the sensations of the reader. By the end of the century, public concern with the thrills, spills, and shocks of modern life was increasingly articulated in the language of sensation. Media sensationalism contributed to this process and magnified its impact, just as sensation was, in turn, taken up by literature, art and film. In the contemporary world the dramatization of these experiences in an era of media panics over terrorism and paedophilia has taken an overtly melodramatic form, in which battles of good and evil play out across the landscapes of our lives.
Sensational Subjects develops an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to exploring these themes, their impact and their implications for understanding the modern world.
A companion volume, Sympathetic Sentiments: Affect, Emotion and Spectacle in the Modern World is published simultaneously by Bloomsbury.
Under what conditions does 'sensation' become 'sensational'?
In the early nineteenth century murder was a staple of the sensationalizing popular press and gruesome descriptions were deployed to make a direct impact on the sensations of the reader. By the end of the century, public concern with the thrills, spills, and shocks of modern life was increasingly articulated in the language of sensation. Media sensationalism contributed to this process and magnified its impact, just as sensation was, in turn, taken up by literature, art and film. In the contemporary world the dramatization of these experiences in an era of media panics over terrorism and paedophilia has taken an overtly melodramatic form, in which battles of good and evil play out across the landscapes of our lives.
Sensational Subjects develops an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to exploring these themes, their impact and their implications for understanding the modern world.
A companion volume, Sympathetic Sentiments: Affect, Emotion and Spectacle in the Modern World is published simultaneously by Bloomsbury.
Reviews / Votes
By inviting us to think about modern experience as both sensation and sensational John Jervis has written a book of wide-ranging importance. Sensational Subjects is a scintillating read. * Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, UK * Sensational Subjects is a remarkable theoretical achievement for its analyses of the fertile interrelationships between aesthetics and a politics of modernity rich in latent possibilities and animated by our "senses" in every sense of this term. * Morton Schoolman, Professor of Political Science, SUNY Albany, USA *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
5 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
540 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4725-3563-4 (9781472535634)
DOI
CBID180679
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
John Jervis is Research Fellow in Cultural Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. He is the author of Exploring the Modern: Patterns of Western Culture and Civilization (1998), Transgressing the Modern: Explorations in the Western Experience of Otherness (2000) and (as co-editor, with Jo Collins) Uncanny Modernity: Cultural Theories, Modern Anxieties (2008).
Content
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Guest Preface
1. Introduction
2. Sensation and Sensationalism
3. Sensational Processes
4. The Aesthetics of Sensation
5. The Distraction of the Modern
6. Cinematic Sensation: the Sublime and the Spectacle
7. Sensational Affect
8. The Melodrama of the Modern
Notes
Index
List of Illustrations
Guest Preface
1. Introduction
2. Sensation and Sensationalism
3. Sensational Processes
4. The Aesthetics of Sensation
5. The Distraction of the Modern
6. Cinematic Sensation: the Sublime and the Spectacle
7. Sensational Affect
8. The Melodrama of the Modern
Notes
Index