{"product_id":"9780870239625","title":"Sacramental Commodities: Gift, Text, and the Sublime in De Quincey","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis study argues that during the eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries, with the rise of a modern market economy in which the text became commodified into a material object -- the book -- writers fought against a perceived loss of authority by developing a theory of the rhetorical Sublime. Like the sacramental presence in the Christian church, the realm of the Sublime allowed the reader an opportunity for incorporation in a spiritual communion with an immaterial text offered by a disembodied authorial presence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on the phenomenology of reading and the cultural dynamics of gift-indebtedness and sacramentalism, Charles J. Rzepka advances his argument through a detailed examination of the life and work of writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey. The book offers both a psychobiography of De Quincey and a fresh study of the evolution of his ideas from early childhood up to publication of his masterwork, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e University of Massachusetts Press\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Massachusetts Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47033016353008,"sku":"9780870239625","price":25.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780870239625_p0.gif?v=1763848528","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780870239625","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}