The origin of the media: Hawthorne and Poe

Vanni Codeluppi
Title book

Year 2017

The origin of the media: Hawthorne and Poe

Few people know it but in the first half of the nineteenth century, two important American writers - Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe - dealt in some of their works with the theme of the appearance of the mass media in modern society. While hiding it behind metaphorical and allusive modalities and using the expressive tools of literature, both show a remarkable awareness of the fundamental social role that, already at that time, the media had begun to assume. This book presents their two most famous stories from this point of view, Wakefield and The Man of the Crowd, preceded by an introduction by media scholar Alberto Abruzzese, who links them directly, highlighting the connections and tracing, in both, a real "point of origin" of today's media.