The Culture of the Europeans

Donald Sassoon The Culture of the Europeans «HarperCollins» Sassoon D. The Culture of the Europeans / D. Sassoon — «HarperCollins», A magisterial narrative account of the creation and consumption of all forms of ‘culture’ across the European continent over the last two hundred years.This compelling, wide-ranging and hugely ambitious book offers, for the first time ever, an integrated history of the culture produced and consumed by Europeans since 1800, and follows its transformation from an elite activity to a mass market – from lending libraries to the internet, from the first public concerts to music downloads.In itself a cultural tour de force, the book covers high and low culture, readers and writers, audiences and prima donnas, Rossini and hip hop, Verdi and the Beatles, Zola and Tintin, Walter Scott and Jules Verne, the serialised novel of the 19th-century as well as ‘Dallas’ and ‘Coronation Street’. Included in its vast scope are fairytales, bestsellers, crime and sci-fi, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers, comic strips, plays, opera, musicals, pop music, sound recording, films, documentaries, radio and television.A continent-wide survey, this majestic work includes discussions of rock music under communism, Polish and Danish bestsellers, French melodramas and German cabarets, fascist and Soviet cinema. It examines the ways culture travels – how it is produced, transformed, adapted, absorbed, sold and consumed; how it is shaped by audiences and politics, and controlled by laws and conventional morality; why some countries excel in particular genres. It examines the anxiety and attraction felt by Europeans towards American culture, and asks to what extent European culture has become Americanised.Stylishly written, devoid of jargon, this is global non-fiction narrative at its best.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version. © Sassoon D. © HarperCollins D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» Содержание THE CULTURE OF 9 DEDICATION 10 CONTENTS 11 INTRODUCTION 13 Culture and Cultural Production 15 Culture and Money 19 Time and Space 21 I 25 1 26 Sources of Cultural Expansion 27 Wealth 31 Politics 34 Education 36 2 40 Triumphant Languages 41 Language and Markets 46 The Hegemony of French 50 And English? 53 3 56 Publishing 57 The History of the Book 59 Expansion 62 National Culture 65 4 67 Peddling Stories 68 Peddlers and Booksellers 71 Stories, Canards and Ballads 73 Borrowing 78 Reading Aloud 81 Packaging 83 5 86 Foundation Stories 87 Hunting for Homer 89 Folk Culture 91 The Saga 94 6 98 Fairy Tales 99 Recording Tales 102 7 107 Novels 108 A Low Genre 111 Realism 116 What is a Novel? 118 Novels and the Bourgeoisie 120 8 122 Trailblazers 123 5 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» Writing Letters 125 Getting Scared 129 9 136 Walter Scott âin Unclouded Splendourâ 1 137 Scott and the Continent 142 10 149 Cultural Hegemony 150 Nationality and Gender 159 11 163 This is Not a Fiction 164 Travelling 167 âHow-Toâ Books 170 12 173 News and Pictures 174 Periodicals 178 Printing the Image 182 13 185 The Music Market 186 Notation 191 Music Publishing 192 Musical Instruments 194 Singing Texts 198 Dancing Music 201 14 203 Audiences and Performers 204 Concert Halls 210 Performers 214 15 219 Opera 220 Rossiniâs Star 228 16 231 Theatre 232 Actors 237 Pleasing the Audience 239 II 244 17 245 Books for the People 246 Sell Them Cheap 248 âGoodâ Books 253 18 258 Newspapers, Magazines and Pictures 259 Press Freedom 262 Respectable Periodicals 264 Dailies 269 Journalists 272 Illustrations 274 19 280 Money Matters 281 Hachette, Schools and Trains 287 6 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» Authors Unite 290 20 294 Reading by Instalments 295 Romans Feuilletons 299 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. 302 7 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» 8 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» THE CULTURE OF THE EUROPEANS FROM 1800 TO THE PRESENT DONALD SASSOON 9 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» DEDICATION To Eric Hobsbawm, il miglior maestro 10 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» CONTENTS Cover Title Page Dedication Introduction Part I: 1800â1830: The Pre-Conditions 1 Sources of Cultural Expansion 2 Triumphant Languages 3 Publishing 4 Peddling Stories 5 Foundation Stories 6 Fairy Tales 7 Novels 8 Trailblazers 9 Walter Scott âin Unclouded Splendourâ 10 Cultural Hegemony 11 This is Not a Fiction 12 News and Pictures 13 The Music Market 14 Audiences and Performers 15 Opera 16 Theatre Part II: 1830â1880: The Triumph of Bourgeois Culture 17 Books for the People 18 Newspapers, Magazines and Pictures 19 Money Matters 20 Reading by Instalments 21 Repressing Culture 22 Beloved Writers 23 Great Genres 24 Women and Novels 25 Challenging the Trailblazers 26 Improving Oneself 27 Music, Composers and Virtuosi 28 The Triumph of the Opera 29 Theatricals Part III: 1880â1920: The Revolution 30 The Revolution in Communications 31 Workers, Jews, Women 32 The Internationalisation of the Novel 33 Zola: Money, Fame and Conscience 34 Stories of Crime and Science Fiction 35 Popular Novels, for Young and Old 36 The Popular Press 37 Shows 38 Music 39 Recorded Sound 11 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» 40 The Moving Image 41 Cinema: Europeans and Americans 42 Cultural Panics Part IV: 1920â1960: The Interventionist State 43 States and Markets 44 Culture and Communism 45 Fascism 46 Mass Culture: The American Challenge 47 Interwar Cinema 48 The Cinema after World War II 49 More Books 50 Popular Genres: Crimes and the Future 51 The Press 52 Comic Strips 53 Live Spectacles 54 The Triumph of the Song 55 Radio Part V: After 1960: The Era of the Mass Media 56 Television: The Universal Medium 57 The Flow of Genres on Television 58 The Break-up of Television 59 Going Out: Cinema and Theatre 60 Culture in the âOtherâ Europe: Communism 61 A World of Readers 62 Exploding Pop Conclusion: The World Wide Web Bibliography of Works Cited Index Acknowledgements About the Author Notes By the Same Author Copyright About the Publisher 12 D. Sassoon. «The Culture of the Europeans» INTRODUCTION An Abundance of Culture At nine oâclock on a weekday morning in December 2000, South Clapham underground station in South London is still crowded with people trying to board âthe tubeâ. The line splits at Kennington station, with some trains proceeding towards the City and others towards the West End. There the trains will disgorge the majority of passengers who will spend the rest of the day in offices and shops. Inside the train, some have the vacant, bored look of those with nothing to do, but some glance at the advertising or read the âPoem on the Undergroundâ â a scheme launched in 1986 by an American writer living in London to bring poetry to passengers. They read â maybe for the first time â Shelleyâs âOzymandiasâ (âI met a traveller from an antique landâ¦â). Others, the majority, busy themselves in various ways. Some of the women read magazines. Others, particularly the lucky ones able to secure a seat, read a daily paper. There, a young man looks, distractedly, at the Sun, the largest-selling tabloid; a young woman reads the Daily Mail, another high- selling daily; but almost the whole of the British daily press is represented in this one carriage â including the liberal Guardian, read by another woman, and the Financial Times, in the hands of a man who does not look like a banker (no tie, no grey suit). The âbest-sellingâ daily, however, is one which is not sold but given away free and called, appropriately, Metro â and also available in Stockholm, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Rome, Toronto, Athens, Warsaw, and Helsinki. Some read books. The titles are not easy to fathom. Perhaps they are the current best-sellers. Well-trained eyes can identify the distinctive black cover of a Penguin classic read by a young woman, perhaps a student, oblivious to the world around her. Could it be Madame Bovary, or a Jane Austen, or one of the shorter Tolstoys? High-culture vultures can only speculate, rejoicing: civilisation has not yet ended; high culture lives on. One (older) person is rapidly completing a crossword puzzle; another (younger, male) is nervously playing with his Nintendo GameBoy machine, developing, no doubt, his reflexes. Other passengers have tiny earphones stuck into their ears, the wire disappearing into their bags or jackets and connected to an unseen disc or cassette player â the iPod is yet to come. The tube is heaving with the consumption of culture. Most of the passengers would have started their day listening to the radio, or eating their hurried breakfast watching some of the morning shows on television, perhaps with their children, or reading yesterdayâs newspaper or even todayâs, delivered by a newsboy on his rounds. Some of the passengers, those who work in shops or restaurants, will spend the rest of the day listening, whether they like it or not, to music. Some â many â work in the culture-producing business themselves, selling books and records, working for publishers, making their way to recording and film and video studios, working for one of the television networks or radio stations, or one of the magazines and newspapers which have offices in London, or in the growing software and computing service sector. They are among the 900,000 people employed in what the Department of Culture calls âthe creative industriesâ, that is, âThose industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.â1 After a dayâs work some of these Londoners will linger on in the centre of town, meeting friends or loved ones or, on their own or with others, will go to a cinema, a theatre, a concert, the opera, a club, or a wine bar or pub where more music will be provided while they drink and talk.

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