"The bourgeois ...Not so long ago, this notion seemed indispensable to social an
alysis; these days, one might go years without hearing it mentioned. Capitalism
is more powerful than ever, but its human embodiment seems to have vanished. 'I
am a member of the bourgeois class, feel myself to be such, and have been brough
t up on its opinions and ideals, ' wrote Max Weber, in 1895.
Who could repeat
these words today? Bourgeois 'opinions and ideals'--what are they?" Thus begins
Franco Moretti's study of the bourgeois in modern European literature--a major
new analysis of the once-dominant culture and its literary decline and fall. Mor
etti's gallery of individual portraits is entwined with the analysis of specific
keywords--"useful" and "earnest," "efficiency," "influence," "comfort," "roba"-
-and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose.
