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10%OFFBernhard Siegert - Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System - 9780804732383 - V9780804732383
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Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System

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Description for Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System Paperback. This book examines how one aspect of the social and technological situation of literature--namely, the postal system as a mode of transmission--determined how literature was produced and what was produced within literature. Translator(s): Repp, Kevin. Series: Writing Science. Num Pages: 340 pages, 13 half-tones. BIC Classification: DSBF; DSK. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 5817 x 3887 x 20. Weight in Grams: 475.

This book examines how one aspect of the social and technological situation of literature—namely, the postal system—determined how literature was produced and what was produced within literature. Language itself has the structure of a relay, where what is transmitted depends on a prior withholding. The social arrangements and technologies for achieving this transmission thus have had a particularly powerful impact on the imagination of literature as a medium.

The book has three parts. The first part reconstructs the postal conditions of classic and Romantic literature: the invention of postage in the seventeenth century, which transformed the postal system into a ... Read more

The second part analyzes nineteenth-century postal innovations that facilitated communication through letters and examines how literary works were able to live off such communication. These innovations included the reform of the post office; the invention of the postage stamp; the Universal Postal Union, which subjected letter writing to an economy of materials and uniform standards; and the telegraph and the telephone, which surpassed literature in terms of speed, economy, and analog-signal processing.

In the third part, on the basis of a close reading of Franz Kafka’s letters to his typist-fiancée, the author demonstrates how postal logistics of love and authorship have worked in the era of modern postal systems and technical media. Kafka’s correspondence is deciphered as a “war of nerves” waged by means of all available techniques and conditions of transmission.

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
1999
Publisher
Stanford University Press United States
Number of pages
340
Condition
New
Series
Writing Science
Number of Pages
340
Place of Publication
Palo Alto, United States
ISBN
9780804732383
SKU
V9780804732383
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50

About Bernhard Siegert
Bernhard Siegert is a Research Scholar at the Zentrum für Literaturforschung, Berlin. He is co-editor, with Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Friedrich Kittler, of Der Dichter als Kommandant: D'Annunzio erobert Fiume.

Reviews for Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System
"This will be important reading for anyone interested in the enormous influence of communication systems on literature and philosophy."—Choice

Goodreads reviews for Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System


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