
Vorige week verscheen bij Amsterdam University Press het boek Branding Books Across the Ages: Strategies and Key Concepts in Literary Branding, waarover ik de redactie voerde met mijn Nijmeegse collega’s Helleke van den Braber, Jos Joosten en Maarten Steenmeijer. Het boek is als gratis e-book te bestellen via AUP, en is daarnaast open access raadpleegbaar via OAPEN en JSTOR.
In het boek onderzoeken we met een team experts uit de literatuurwetenschap hoe de complexe verhouding tussen literatuur en marketing in elkaar steekt, met casussen vanuit de vroegmoderne tijd tot heden. De flaptekst luidt als volgt:
For many, literature and marketing are considered opposite phenomena. This book discusses cases in which the two are closely connected. It argues that literature is subject to the same mechanisms as other commercial products: our experience of literary texts is prefigured by brands, trademarks that identify a product and differentiate it from its competitors. From the early modern period onwards, literary authors and their texts are constantly ‘branded’ and have been both the object and the trailblazer of a complex marketing process. The authors of this volume analyze this branding process throughout the centuries, focusing on the Netherlands. To what extent is our experience of Dutch literature prefigured by brands, and what role does branding play when introducing European authors in the Dutch literary field (or vice versa)? By answering these questions, Branding Books Across the Ages seeks to show how literary scholars understand branding – a phenomenon that has long been intertwined with literature.
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