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Copyright 2016 Julie Mccormick Weng Copyright 2016 Julie McCormick Weng IRISH MODERNISM AND THE MACHINE BY JULIE MCCORMICK WENG DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Vicki Mahaffey, Chair Associate Professor Jim Hansen Assistant Professor Andrew Gaedtke Associate Professor Kathryn Conrad ! ii! ABSTRACT This dissertation argues that John Eglinton, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, W.B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett depict machines in texts in order to interrogate the status of Ireland’s modernity. Are trains, dynamos (power generators), and bicycles signs of Ireland’s progress? Instead of an affirmation, I posit that Irish modernists issue a qualification, suggesting that Ireland’s technological development must be accompanied by ideological advancement. Irish modernists thus cast machines as vehicles that operate beyond the bounds of their mechanistic functions. These machines serve also as engines from which to lobby for Ireland’s social, cultural, and ideological progress. With this premise in mind, these writers use images of machines to: 1) envision a cosmopolitan national literary revival movement; 2) redress negative stereotypes of Ireland and Irish people as being “backwards”; 3) reject the post-enlightenment belief in a disenchanted, merely rational world; and 4) counter traditional gender and sexual roles. In all of these instances, Irish modernists endorse outlooks that go against traditional social and cultural grains. Rather, they insist that modernization is a process that necessitates ideological, and not just technological, advancement. Moreover, Irish modernists show that it is only by pushing the boundaries of popular beliefs and practices—and not just the limits of scientific knowledge—that Ireland will embrace a modern identity that engages meaningfully with the complexities of the age. ! iii! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus describes the poet’s process: And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. With this image, Theseus speaks of the poet writing in isolation, creating “fantasies” out of formless unknowns. While my writing journey required an uncountable number of hours spent alone, my ideas took shape and found homes with the assistance of a host of supporters to whom I am immensely grateful. First, I must express gratitude to my dissertation director, mentor, and friend, Vicki Mahaffey. Her encouragement and insights were invaluable to this dissertation. Furthermore, her great strengths as a reader of literature have challenged me to see texts and ideas with sharper eyes. I must also thank Jim Hansen, Andrew Gaedtke, and Kathryn Conrad for serving on my dissertation committee. They each brought different perspectives to the project and pushed me to consider my ideas in new ways. Finally, I am indebted to my family. There are not enough words to thank my biggest fan—my “Mama”—who introduced me as a child to books and championed my graduate studies. Although my “Daddio” passed away during the writing of this dissertation, he always valued my words and believed in me. Last, this dissertation would not have been possible without the loving support of my life partner. Tim, you are my rock. Thank you for offering me unwavering support every day. ! iv! TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: IRELAND’S INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATIONS………...…………………...1 CHAPTER 1: JOHN EGLINTON: AN IRISH FUTURIST…………………………………….27 CHAPTER 2: FROM ‘DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN’ TO ‘HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS’: A VISION OF THE CITY THROUGH THE TRAMWAYS OF ULYSSES………………..…..…82 CHAPTER 3: DIVINE DYNAMOS AND MODERN IRISH ENLIGHTENMENT….………116 CHAPTER 4: RIDING THEIR ‘BISEXYCLE[S]’: CONSTRUCTING MODERN FEMININITY IN JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE AND MASCULINITY IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S MOLLOY……………..………………………………………………….………155 EPILOGUE: (TECHNOLOGICAL) METAPHORS: A WRITER’S ALCHEMY...…..………198 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………205 1" INTRODUCTION: IRELAND’S INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATIONS Technological, adj. 1. a. The branch of knowledge dealing with the mechanical arts and applied sciences; the study of this.1 Modernity, n. 1. a. The quality or condition of being modern; modernness of character or style. b. spec. An intellectual tendency or social perspective characterized by departure from or repudiation of traditional ideas, doctrines, and cultural values in favour of contemporary or radical values and beliefs (chiefly those of scientific rationalism and liberalism).2 John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer (1925) uses standalone and interconnected vignettes to construct a colorful collage of snapshots of New York City life during the first half of the twentieth century. In one of these vignettes, a real estate agent reflects enthusiastically on new technologies and their importance for the future. As the agent exclaims to “Mr. Perry,” a great deal is going to happen in the next few years. All these mechanical inventions—telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles—they are all leading somewhere. It’s up to us to be on the inside, in the forefront of progress….My God! I can’t begin to tell you what it will mean….3 With this pronouncement, the real estate agent emphasizes the widespread excitement new advancements bring to modern life. From his perspective, they are the building blocks of the technological age, and they define his generation. Through his use of the pronouns “us” and “you,” he concludes his declaration with a resolution that the “progress” of the nation rests in the innovative hands of the people themselves; they need only grasp it. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 1 “technological, adj.” OED Online. March 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/view/Entry/198463?redirectedFrom=technological (accessed April 27, 2015). 2 “modernity, n.” OED Online. March 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/view/Entry/120626?redirectedFrom=modernity (accessed April 27, 2015). 3 John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 14. 2" While Dos Passos situates the real estate agent’s claim within an American context, it might suitably herald the turn of the twentieth century in Ireland as well. The agent’s assertion possesses a sentiment that similarly entered into Ireland’s atmosphere. It was a time, as F. S. L. Lyons asserts, “when everything seemed possible.”4 In this dissertation, Irish Modernism and the Machine, I explore the way that a selection of Irish modernists were in fact on the “inside” and “forefront” of Ireland’s technological development by representing tramcars, dynamos (power generators), and bicycles in their writings. When we look closely at Ireland during this period, we discover that its industrial and technological developments reached a new and unparalleled height in the same moment that its most famous literary movement to date—the Irish Literary Revival—was born. Although this literary movement as a whole is not known for its representations of technologies in art, a study of its key texts reveals that a selection of Irish writers who are especially linked today with high modernism, in fact, did. In these texts, technologies and art coalesce in a joining that bolsters our insights into the connection between Ireland and literary modernism and also, as Dos Passos’s real estate agent acknowledges, the relationship between humans and machines in an emerging technological age. Yet, unlike the real estate agent, these Irish writers do not place machines on a figurative pedestal. They do not view new technologies as promises of Ireland’s bright future. Rather they see machines as signs of Ireland’s limitations. While Ireland, indeed, matured industrially and technologically, Irish modernists use machines to identify aspects of its social and cultural immaturity. By pointing to mechanical icons, these writers thus interrogate the status of Ireland’s modernity, concluding that “technological” “modernity”—understood through all of the varied senses of the terms as they are defined in the epigraphs above—does not equate to social and cultural modernity. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 4 F. S. L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 55. 3" With this in mind, I examine depictions of machines in the works of John Eglinton, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, W.B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett. I study also these writers’ works in relation to those of their transatlantic counterparts, including texts by Italian, English, and American writers such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, E. M. Forster, H. G. Wells, Henry Adams, and Eugene O’Neill. Unsurprisingly, Joyce’s works configure into each of the following chapters. More than any other Irish writer of his generation, Joyce pushed the boundaries of literary tradition through his effort to encapsulate all of the mundane and marvelous elements of daily life, including its technological elements. Rather than focus each chapter on the work of a single author, I have organized them around single technological instruments. Organizing the dissertation in this manner resulted in some chapters relying on the works of a single author and some chapters relying on the works of multiple authors. My chapter on tramcars, for example, tackles one
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