Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture As Social Decay

Patrick Brantlinger

Published by Cornell University Press 2016

Bread and Circuses

Theories of Mass Culture As Social Decay

Patrick Brantlinger
Funded by: National Endowment for the Humanities Open Book Program

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501707643

Overview
Contents

About this book

Lively and well written, Bread and Circuses analyzes theories that have treated mass culture as either a symptom or a cause of social decadence. Discussing many of the most influential and representative theories of mass culture, it ranges widely from Greek and Roman origins, through Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Ortega y Gasset, T. S. Eliot, and the theorists of the Frankfurt Institute, down to Marshall McLuhan and Daniel Bell, Brantlinger considers the many versions of negative classicism and shows how the belief in the historical inevitability of social decay—a belief today perpetuated by the mass media themselves—has become the dominant view of mass culture in our time. While not defending mass culture in its present form, Brantlinger argues that the view of culture implicit in negative classicism obscures the question of how the media can best be used to help achieve freedom and enlightenment on a truly democratic basis.

Author / Editor information

Patrick Brantlinger is James Rudy Professor of English (Emeritus) at Indiana University. He is the author of many books, including Dark Vanishings, Fictions of State, Rule of Darkness, and Bread and Circuses, all from Cornell.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	7
Preface Open Access Download PDF	9
1. Introduction: The Two Classicisms Open Access Download PDF	17
2. The Classical Roots of the Mass Culture Debate Open Access Download PDF	53
3. "The Opium of the People" Open Access Download PDF	82
4. Some Nineteenth-Century Themes: Decadence, Masses, Empire, Gothic Revivals Open Access Download PDF	113
5. Crowd Psychology and Freud's Model of Perpetual Decadence Open Access Download PDF	154
6. Three Versions of Modern Classicism: Ortega, Eliot, Camus Open Access Download PDF	184
7. The Dialectic of Enlightenment Open Access Download PDF	222
8. Television: Spectacularity vs. McLuhanism Open Access Download PDF	249
9. Conclusion: Toward Post-Industrial Society Open Access Download PDF	278
Index Open Access Download PDF	299

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 312
Keywords: Media Studies; History; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: November 1, 2016
ISBN: 9781501707643