{"product_id":"the-secret-history-of-domesticity-public-private-and-the-division-of-knowledge-directors-circle-book-9780801885402","title":"The Secret History of Domesticity: Public  Private  and the Division of Knowledge (Director's Circle Book)","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner  Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Awards in Communication and Cultural Studies Taking English culture as its representative sample  The Secret History of Domesticity asks how the modern notion of the public-private relation emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Treating that relation as a crucial instance of the modern division of knowledge  Michael McKeon narrates its pre-history along with that of its essential component  domesticity. This narrative draws upon the entire spectrum of English peoples experience. At the most \"public\" extreme are political developments like the formation of civil society over against the state  the rise of contractual thinking  and the devolution of absolutism from monarch to individual subject. The middle range of experience takes in the influence of Protestant and scientific thought  the printed publication of the private  the conceptualization of virtual publicssociety  public opinion  the marketand the capitalization of production  the decline of the domestic economy  and the increase in the sexual division of labor. The most \"private\" pole of experience involves the privatization of marriage  the family  and the household  and the complex entanglement of femininity  interiority  subjectivity  and sexuality. McKeon accounts for how the relationship between public and private experience first became intelligible as a variable interaction of distinct modes of beingnot a static dichotomy  but a tool to think with. Richly illustrated with nearly 100 images  including paintings  engravings  woodcuts  and a representative selection of architectural floor plans for domestic interiors  this volume reads graphic forms to emphasize how susceptible the public-private relation was to concrete and spatial representation. McKeon is similarly attentive to how literary forms evoked a tangible sense of public-private relationsamong them figurative imagery  allegorical narration  parody  the author-character-reader dialectic  aesthetic distance  and free indirect discourse. He also finds a structural analogue for the emergence of the modern public-private relation in the conjunction of what contemporaries called the \"secret history\" and the domestic novel. A capacious and synthetic historical investigation  The Secret History of Domesticity exemplifies how the methods of literary interpretation and historical analysis can inform and enrich one another.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45651566034997,"sku":"ByrdShop_080188540X","price":41.04,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780801885402.jpg?v=1781835773","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-secret-history-of-domesticity-public-private-and-the-division-of-knowledge-directors-circle-book-9780801885402","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}