"The bourgeois ... Not so long ago, this notion seemed indispensable to social analysis; these days, one might go years without hearing it mentioned. Capitalism is more powerful than ever, but its human embodiment seems to have vanished. 'I am a member of the bourgeois class, feel myself to be such, and have been brought up on its opinions and ideals,' wrote Max Weber, in 1895. Who could repeat these words today? Bourgeois 'opinions and ideals'-what are they?" Thus begins Franco Moretti's study of the bourgeois in modern European literature-a major new analysis of the once-dominant culture and its literary decline and fall. Moretti's gallery of individual portraits is entwined with the analysis of specific keywords-"useful" and "earnest," "efficiency," "influence," "comfort," "roba"-and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. From the "working master" of the opening chapter, through the seriousness of nineteenth-century novels, the conservative hegemony of Victorian Britain, the "national malformations" of the Southern and Eastern periphery, and the radical self-critique of Ibsen's twelve-play cycle, the book charts the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and for its current irrelevance.

Who – and what – are the Bourgeois? “The bourgeois ... Not so long ago, this notion seemed indispensable to social analysis; these days, one might go years without hearing it mentioned. Capitalism is more powerful than ever, but its human embodiment seems to have vanished. ‘I am a member of the bourgeois class, feel myself to be such, and have been brought up on its opinions and ideals,’ wrote Max Weber, in 1895. Who could repeat these words today? Bourgeois ‘opinions and ideals’—what are they?” Thus begins Franco Moretti’s study of the bourgeois in modern European literature—a major new analysis of the once-dominant culture and its literary decline and fall. Moretti’s gallery of individual portraits is entwined with the analysis of specific keywords—“useful” and “earnest,” “efficiency,” “influence,” “comfort,” “roba”—and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. From the “working master” of the opening chapter, through the seriousness of nineteenth-century novels, the conservative hegemony of Victorian Britain, the “national malformations” of the Southern and Eastern periphery, and the radical self-critique of Ibsen’s twelve-play cycle, the book charts the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and for its current irrelevance.

How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, the theoretical influences over his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions. From the evolutionary model of "Modern European Literature," through the geo-cultural insights of "Conjectures of World Literature" and "Planet Hollywood," to the quantitative findings of "Style, inc." and the abstract patterns of "Network Theory, Plot Analysis," the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of "distant reading," that has come to define-well beyond the wildest expectations of its author-a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.

In our world of sophisticated literary theory and cliometrics, the gap between literature and history, between literary scholars and historians, has at times seemed to be widening. Drawing on essays written over the course of a distinguished teaching career, Lionel Gossman illuminates the many facets of the problematic relationship between history and literature and shows how each discipline both challenges and undermines the other's absolutist pretensions. In his first chapters Gossman underlines the historicity of the very category of literature and explores the political and social implications of the notions we have of it. Literature emerges as something whose meaning and content are not as self-evident as we think; instead, what is designated by the term literature is defined by a larger cultural structure that is constantly changing. Gossman then turns to the interweaving of history and literature in historical writing itself, showing how literary narratives, philosophy, and politics are inextricably bound up in the texts of two major Romantic historians, Augustin Thierry and Jules Michelet. Seeing ourselves in relation to our Romantic predecessors--set out sympathetically and fully here by Gossman--should cause us to reflect on the current disjunction between literature and history and to try to imagine new ways in which one practice may assist and enrich the other. The final chapters deal directly with the question of the relationship between history and literature, both historically and as a contemporary problem. The last essay in particular addresses the twin issues of the place of narrative in historiography and the alleged incommensurability of historical narratives. Gossman's detailed inquiries into the work of the Romantic historians and his thoughtful reflections on his own assumptions and practices as a scholar exemplify the highest ideals of humanistic scholarship. This eloquent and erudite work challenges us to rethink our notions about literature and history while enriching our understanding of both disciplines.

This essay collection presents a global history of the middle class and its rise around the world during the age of empire. It compares middle-class formation in various regions, highlighting differences and similarities, and assesses the extent to which bourgeois growth was tied to the increasing exchange of ideas and goods and was a result of international connections and entanglements. Grouped by theme, the book shows how bourgeois values can shape the liberal world order.

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.