The Bourgeois Between History and Literature

Renowned literary theorist Franco Moretti presents an incisive cultural and stylistic exploration of how the bourgeois identity was forged within European narrative tradition. Addressing a paradox—how the human face of capitalism seems to have vanished from cultural consciousness even as capitalism reigns supreme—Moretti examines the prose, keywords, and structural grammar of the modern novel. Moving through key eras and major figures from Daniel Defoe and Honoré de Balzac to Charles Dickens, Henrik Ibsen, and Thomas Mann, the book highlights how concepts like "useful," "efficiency," "earnestness," and prose realism became the linguistic bedrock of bourgeois ideology. Combining literary sociology with close stylistic analysis, Moretti reveals how literature both legitimized the rise of the middle class and laid bare its internal anxieties and eventual cultural decline.

It is a masterclass in literary sociology and stylistic analysis by one of today's most influential literary critics, bridging history, language, and the evolution of the European novel.

Ideal for scholars and students of comparative literature, literary theory, cultural history, and sociology, as well as readers fascinated by the intersection of narrative form and economic history.