Encounters with the Object: Advertisements, Time, and Literary Discourse in the Early Eighteenth-Century Thing-Poem

• Published in: Eighteenth-century studies Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 193 - 207
• Main Author: Benedict, Barbara M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.12.2007
• Subjects: Advertisements; Advertising; Advertising campaigns; Advertising signs; Business; Ceremonial objects; Commodities; Competition; Eighteenth century literature; Gay, John; Ideology; Lost & found property; Love poetry; Lyric poetry; Occasional poetry; Philosophical object; Poetry; Poets; Political theory; Prototypes; Signs; Urban areas; Los Angeles California; Baltimore Maryland
• ISSN: 0013-2586; 1086-315X; 1086-315X
• DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2007.0000

Although consumption theory assumes a distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, this essay argues that early eighteenth-century poets, especially Swift, Pope, and Gay, view the margin between things and humans as hazardously pervious. Subjectivity might collapse into objectivity under the pressure of encountering things, while objects, in the contexts of a consumer culture and a literature of printed advertising, were becoming the subjects of literature and culture. The result is the thing-poem: a poetic redefinition of the relations of subject to time that borrows from occasional verse, satire, posies, and advertising to portray the clash between durable object and transient subject.