Signs Taken for Wonders: Essay in the Sociology of Literary Forms (Verso Classics) [Paperback]

Franco Moretti (Author), David Miller (Translator), David Forgacs (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1859841716 | ISBN-13: 978-1859841716 | Publication Date: January 1997

This work of literary analysis examines the great works of modern literature, from Shakespeare's tragedies to Joyce's "Ulysses" as historical "signs" - literary systems that are tokens of wider cultural and political realities. Covering such diverse genres as baroque tragedy, horror, detective fiction and classical realism, the book presents an analysis of the relations between high and mass culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A sheer intelligence animates the pages of Mr Moretti’s work. (Edward Said )

Breathtaking ... Moretti's radiant intelligence can catch you off guard. (San Francisco Review of Books ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English, Italian (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 314 pages
• Publisher: Verso (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859841716
• ISBN-13: 978-1859841716
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,215,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic insight into the European novel, June 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Signs Taken for Wonders: Essay in the Sociology of Literary Forms (Verso Classics) (Paperback)

All of Franco Moretti's in-class charm and wit is demonstrated in this series of essays on various forms of the European novel. He does a fantastic job of legitimizing not only popular texts, such as Dracula and the Sherlock Holmes series, but also the field of literary criticism itself. He makes a compelling argument for not only the profound effect that society has had in forming literary trends, but also literature's role in shaping society. His essay on Tragedy in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama contains some particularly fascinating insights into this phenomenon. While written in a colloquial tone, some essays can come across overly mandarin at times. Get through the first and most difficult essay, 'The Soul and the Harpy', and the rest will be smooth sailing. He makes his field seem almost, dare I say, 'cool'.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evolutionary Theory and Literary History, November 13, 2010

By 

Ian M. Buchanan (Cardiff, Wales) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Signs Taken For Wonders (Paperback)

In the striking final chapter of this book, and further developed in several essays since, Franco Moretti proposes a theory of literary evolution inspired by Charles Darwin. As is well known, Darwin's theory of `natural selection' has two key components: first, it postulates that change is random, more prone to failure than to success, and not the unfolding of a teleological process progressing towards some final form of perfection (humans are not more perfect than the humanoids they evolved from); second, it postulates that only those changes which give the creature a reproductive advantage in a given set of external conditions survive (survival of the fittest means survival of the fastest reproducer). Adapting this to the needs of literary history, Moretti renders `natural selection' as follows: (1) aesthetic variation is the product of chance; and (2) the literary marketplace determines which formal variations survive. In later works, Moretti brings in `world-systems' theory to account for the peculiarities of the market, thus departing from his initial quite strict focus on Darwin, but nevertheless maintains the original evolutionary model conceived here. The other striking piece in this work is the essay on Dracula and Frankenstein -- Moretti argues quite brilliantly that these novels reflect two different perspectives on apital -- that of owners and that of employers.