Abstract
Any description of middlebrow literature implies a relational component: to define what the middlebrow is, or to label a literary fact as middlebrow, one always depends on an understanding of what its highbrow and lowbrow counterparts are.1 With reference to the early decades of the twentieth century, highbrow literature is usually identified with modernism. From a historical point of view, the choice of this reference point may certainly be called valid to some extent—the battle of the brows in interwar Britain is a case in point—but it remains important to examine its effects on our concept of the middlebrow. One of these effects seems to be a limitation of the geographical contexts for the study of middlebrow literature.
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Notes
Macdonald, K, ‘Introduction: Identifying the Middlebrow, the Masculine and Mr Miniver’, in The Masculine Middlebrow, 1880–1950: What Mr Miniver Read, K Macdonald (ed.) (Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2011), 1–23, 4.
Rymenants, K and P Verstraeten, ‘Modernism in the Ether: Middlebrow Perspectives on European Literature in Flemish Radio Talks (1936–37)’, in Regarding the Popular: Modernism, the Avant-Garde and High and Low Culture, Bru, S, L van Nuijs, B Hjartarson, P Nicholls, T Ørun and H van den Berg (eds.) (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012), 410–24, 423.
Robbers, H, Litteraire smaak (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1924).
Rubin, J S, The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 209.
‘Elsevier’s Illustrated Monthly’, 1891–1940; see Rymenants, K, T Sintobin and P Verstraeten, ‘Arrière-garde Perspectives on the History of Modern Literature: The Case of the Netherlands (1880–1940)’, in Modernism Today, Houppermans, S, P Liebregts, J Baetens and O Boele (eds.) (Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi, 2013), 99–119. A digital version of the magazine and a number of literary-historical resources (in Dutch) can be found at http://www.elseviermaandschrift.nl.
Simons, W J, ‘Herman Robbers 1868–1937’, in De tijd van Herman Robbers: Bloemlezing uit Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift 1905–1937, Simons, WJ (ed.) (Amsterdam/Brussel: Elsevier, 1968), 9–13, 10.
Van Buul, A, ‘Inleiding’, in Lopende vuurtjes: Engelse kunst en literatuur in Nederland en België rond 1900, van Buul, A (ed.) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012), 9–21, 15.
Carey, J, The Intellectuals and the Masses (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 2002), 180.
Latham, S, ‘Am I a Snob?’: Modernism and the Novel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 200.
Shapcott, J, ‘Aesthetics for Everyman: Arnold Bennett’s Evening Standard Columns’, in Middlebrow Literary Cultures: The Battle of the Brows, 1920–1960, Brown, E and M Grover (eds.) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 82–97, 83.
Within Bourdieu’s framework, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that Robbers straddled the lower end of the hierarchy of the sub-field of restricted production and the upper end of the sub-field of large-scale production. The logic of the (former) avant-garde determines his poetics, but his sales figures surpass those of ‘restricted production’. Pollentier rightly points out that the binarity of Bourdieu’s model makes it difficult to integrate the idea of the middlebrow, although Bourdieu himself has referred to this as l’art moyen (Pollentier, C, ‘Configuring Middleness: Bourdieu, l’Art Moyen and the Broadbrow’, in Middlebrow Literary Cultures: The Battle of the Brows, 1920–1960, Brown, E and M Grover (eds) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 37–51, 43).
Hermans, T (ed.), A Literary History of the Low Countries (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009), 697.
Ardis, A, Modernism and Cultural Conflict, 1888–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 116.
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Rymenants, K. (2015). Middlebrow Criticism across National Borders. In: Macdonald, K., Singer, C. (eds) Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880–1930. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137486776_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137486776_11
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