The Thing-Cultures of Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy and William Morris’s News from Nowhere
Keywords:
Thing Theory, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, Victorian LiteratureAbstract
This paper considers Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy alongsideWilliam Morris's News from Nowhere through the lens of Bill Brown's Thing Theory. From the 'things' of Arnold's primarily object-less ideas to the 'things' of Morris's primarily idea-less objects, the author argues that each writer rejects nineteenth-century commodity culture in order to imagine establishing new orders of the material and immaterial.
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