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The Multiverse of Office Fiction

Masaomi Kobayashi

From Shelf: New hardbacks to look forward to, October 22

This book aims to illuminate office fiction-fiction featuring office workers such as clerks, civil servants, and company employees-as an underexplored genre of fiction, by addressing relevant issues such as evolution of office work, integration of work and life, exploitation of women office workers, and representation of the Post Office.

The Multiverse of Office Fiction liberates Herman Melville's 1853 classic, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," from a microcosm of Melville studies, namely the so-called Bartleby Industry. This book aims to illuminate office fiction-fiction featuring office workers such as clerks, civil servants, and company employees-as an underexplored genre of fiction, by addressing relevant issues such as evolution of office work, integration of work and life, exploitation of women office workers, and representation of the Post Office. In achieving this goal, Bartleby plays an essential role not as one of the most eccentric characters in literary fiction, but rather as one of the most generic characters in office fiction. Overall, this book demonstrates that Bartleby is a generative figure, by incorporating a wide diversity of his cousins as Bartlebys. It offers fresh contexts in which to place these characters so that it can ultimately contribute to an ever-evolving poetics of the office.

Format:
Hardback
Pages:
225
Publisher:
Springer International Publishing AG
ISBN:
9783031126871
Published Date:
16/11/2022
Dimensions:
210mm x 148mm
Category:
Literature: history & criticism

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RRP: £109.99

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9783031126871

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