Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World
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 turban, 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.

1116891373
Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World
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 turban, 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.

42.95 In Stock
Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World

Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World

Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World

Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World

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Overview

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 turban, 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781472535597
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 03/26/2015
Series: The WISH List
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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).

Table of Contents

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

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