Necessary Luxuries: German Literature and the World of Goods, 1770-1815

FAIN: FA-56070-11

Matthew Erlin
Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)

"Necessary Luxuries" argues that the trajectory of literary production and consumption in Germany between 1770 and 1815 can only be adequately understood against the backdrop of an emerging consumer culture and the debates about luxury that accompanied its rise. My project demonstrates that authors of imaginative fiction were deeply concerned with their status as luxury producers, and it shows how the strategies they developed to justify their activities emerged in dialogue with more general discussions regarding the legitimacy of new forms of discretionary consumption. I address broad eighteenth-century debates about the dangers of excessive reading and the legitimacy of luxury editions as well as elucidating the degree to which concerns about luxury shape the structural and rhetorical features of specific literary works. I hope to shed light on current debates about the value of literature by returning to a moment when such questions were being posed with particular urgency.

Associated Products

Necessary Luxuries: Books, Literature, and the Culture of Consumption in Germany, 1770–1815 (Book)
Title: Necessary Luxuries: Books, Literature, and the Culture of Consumption in Germany, 1770–1815
Author: Matt Erlin
Abstract: The consumer revolution of the eighteenth century brought new and exotic commodities to Europe from abroad—coffee, tea, spices, and new textiles to name a few. Yet one of the most widely distributed luxury commodities in the period was not new at all, and was produced locally—the book. In Necessary Luxuries Matt Erlin considers books and the culture around books during this period, focusing specifically on Germany where literature, and the fine arts in general, were the subject of soul-searching debates over the legitimacy of luxury in the modern world. Building on recent work done in the fields of consumption studies as well as the New Economic Criticism, Erlin combines intellectual-historical chapters (on luxury as a concept, luxury editions, and concerns about addictive reading) with contextualized close readings of novels by Campe, Wieland, Moritz, Novalis, and Goethe. As he demonstrates, artists in this period were deeply concerned with their status as luxury producers. The rhetorical strategies they developed to justify their activities evolved in dialogue with more general discussions regarding new forms of discretionary consumption. By emphasizing the fragile legitimacy of the fine arts in the period, Necessary Luxuries offers a fresh perspective on the broader trajectory of German literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, one that allows us to view the entire period in terms of a dynamic unity, rather than simply as a series of literary trends and countertrends.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt5hh26b
Access Model: open access
Publisher: Cornell UP
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

DAAD/GSA Prize for the Best Book in Literature and Cultural Studies
Date: 10/1/2016
Organization: DAAD/GSA
Abstract: The DAAD/GSA book prizes are funded through the North American office of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and carry an award of $1,000. Under the provision of the DAAD grant, eligibility is restricted to authors who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States and Canada. Translations, editions, anthologies, memoirs, and books that have been previously published are not eligible. Two prizes are awarded: one for the best book in literature or cultural studies, and one for the best book in history or social sciences:

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