Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic

by Elizabeth Outka

Overview

In an unprecedented phenomenon that swept across Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century, writers, advertisers, and architects began to create and sell images of an authentic cultural realm paradoxically considered outside the marketplace. Such images were located in nostalgic pictures of an idyllic, pre-industrial past, in supposedly original objects not derived from previous traditions, and in the ideal of a purified aesthetic that might be separated from the mass market. Presenting a lively, unique study of what she terms the commodified authentic, Elizabeth Outka explores this crucial but overlooked development in the history of modernity with a piercing look at consumer culture and the marketing of authenticity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. The book brings together a wide range of cultural sources, from the model towns of Bournville, Port Sunlight, and Letchworth; to the architecture of Edwin Lutyens and Selfridges department store; to work by authors such as Bernard Shaw, E. M. Forster, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190451752
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/12/2008
Series:	Modernist Literature and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Elizabeth Outka is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. She has published essays on modernism and British culture in Modernism/modernity, NOVEL and other publications.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Selling Authenticity
Part One: Commodified Nostalgia and the Country Aesthetic
2. The Past is a Present Country: Model Towns and Commercial Utopias
3. Buying Time: E. M. Forster and the Neo-Nostalgic Home
Part Two: Urban Authenticities
4. The Vanishing Act of Commercialism: Selfridges, Modernity, and the Purified Marketplace
5. "Lustrous Behind Glass": Woolf, Window Shopping, and Authentic Display
Conclusion: Modernist Excursions

Editorial Reviews

"Guilty pleasures become serious virtues in Outka's transformative account of 'commodified authenticity,' that prodigy by which modernist culture gave us such things as gorgeous fakeries, original copies, and mass-produced purity. Modern art, modern commerce: in this brilliant book, the two reveal all their most delicious collaborations and all the mass benefits of mass culture. Consuming Traditions brings us the best of both worlds. It is the best kind of book-one that wholly rethinks early twentieth-century culture and discovers much new to love about it."-Jesse Matz, Kenyon College

"Outka has unearthed treasures in numerous archives, from town planning and architecture to department stores and periodicals. As she shows in fresh readings of Shaw, Wells, James, Forster, Lawrence, Joyce, and Woolf, high modernism itself thrived on the contradiction that mass-produced authenticity (like heritage today) was its stock in trade."-Alison Booth, University of Virginia

"A bold, consequential rereading. Against familiar accounts of modernism's relations with consumer culture, Outka argues for the productive investment of key culture-makers in the ongoing contradictions underpinning commodity logic. Not only are her readings of such figures as James, Forster, Lawrence, and Woolf revelatory; they make such keywords as 'authenticity' and 'tradition' available for new and richer engagement." -Sara Blair, University of Michigan

"Consuming Traditions makes a crucial contribution to modernist scholarship...other scholars will surely build on the ground she has ingeniously broken. I expect the phrase "commodified authentic" to enter, very quickly, the regular vocabulary of modernist studies." —Modernism/Modernity

"Invigorating and important." —Clio

"Consuming Traditions covers an impressive amount of ground...This book is worth reading for anyone interested in Woolf or in British modern literature more generally—as well as for those interested in the history of consumer culture." —Woolf Studies Annual

"Consuming Traditions shows us that cultural studies still has much to offer scholars of modernist literature." —Modern Fiction Studies

"Outka concludes that now, more than ever, we need to acknowledge the danger, but also the potential, of the commodified authentic. To engage with it critically, in the kind of work Outka has undertaken in Consuming Traditions, is to open up possibilities for freedom and creativity." —Virginia Woolf Miscellany

From the Publisher