Literary Modernism, Bioscience, and Community in Early 20Th Century

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Literary Modernism, Bioscience, and Community in Early 20Th Century Literary Modernism, Bioscience, and Community in Early 20th Century Britain This page intentionally left blank Literary Modernism, Bioscience, and Community in Early 20th Century Britain Craig A. Gordon LITERARY MODERNISM, BIOSCIENCE, AND COMMUNITY IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY BRITAIN © Craig A. Gordon, 2007. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-3049-7754-0 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embod- ied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-53759-4 ISBN 978-0-230-60418-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230604186 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: May 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Part 1 Germ Cultures: D. H. Lawrence and the Vital Question of the Tubercular Body 1 Where “Life Joins Hands with Death”: Lawrence, the Sanatorium, and the Bare Life of the Tubercular Body 23 2 Unraveling Lawrence’s Vital Web of Dynamic Consciousness: Incorporating the Work of Community or Assembling a Multitude? 81 Part 2 Atoms Upon the Mind: Virginia Woolf and the Nervous Body at the Limit of Community 3 Organizing the Nervous Body, Regulating the Self: The Psychological Production of National Community in Mrs. Dalloway and The Waves 129 4 Breaking Habits, Affecting the Neuropsychological Body: Toward the “Unsubstantial Territory” of Disorganized Community 161 Appendix 207 Notes 211 Works Cited 223 Index 231 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments My most sincere gratitude is due to both Kim Michasiw and Thomas Loebel, whose consistently acute commentary and substantial patience fundamentally shaped this work at an early stage. The project has also benefited enormously from the insights of Lauren Gillingham, Jennifer Henderson, and Julie Murray, who have offered me the benefit of both general dialogue and very specific and detailed readings of my work. It equally has been a privilege, and a source of inspiration, that they have so generously shared their work with me and have provided sustaining friendship when I needed it most. I also want to thank Keith Denny, Chris Douglas, Rob Hemmings, Lori Kiefer, Phil Kiff, Peter Sinnema, Lisa Sloniowski, and Janet Wesselius for their intellectual comradeship and friendship. They each deserve more specific thanks than I am able to render here, and I can only hope that they will allow me to attend to that debt in other ways and at other times. In having shared with me their humor, intelligence, and energy, not to mention countless meals and drinks, they have made life much more than merely livable and have demonstrated to me, in innumerable ways, the value of the communities in which I am fortunate to participate. Most of all, I would like to thank Alison Lee. Thank you for your insight, intelligence, support, and patience. Thank you for talking and listening. And thank you for making life fun. Finally, it would be impossible to adequately acknowledge the debt I owe to my parents, Elaine and Murray. Through their interest, curiosity, encour- agement, sympathy, friendship, confidence, and periodic anxiety, they have allowed me to trust my abilities, affirmed my ambitions, and reminded me of the much broader perspective within which those ambitions are most pro- ductively contemplated. Without their love and unflinching support, this book would have been utterly impossible. My initial preparations and the early writing of this manuscript were sup- ported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the final stages of the work were supported by a grant from the College of Arts at the University of Guelph. My work also viii • Acknowledgments owes a debt to the expertise and assistance of the staff at the British Library, and the Wellcome Library, London, England. Parts of Chapters 3 and 4 were previously published in “Breaking Habits, Building Communities: Virginia Woolf and the Neuroscientific Body,” which appeared in issue 7, volume 1, of Modernism/Modernity in 2000. They are reprinted here with the permis- sion of Johns Hopkins University Press. The cover image appears courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. List of Abbreviations CE Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays, 4 vols., ed. Leonard Woolf (London: Hogarth, 1966–67). F D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). MD Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). MM Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: The Modern Library, 1955). PS D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent (Quetzalcoatl), ed. L. D. Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). PT [1910] David C. Muthu, Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Sanatorium Treatment: A Record of Ten Years’ Observation and Work in Open-Air Sanatoria (London: Baillière, 1910). PT [1922] David C. Muthu, Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Its Etiology and Treatment: A Record of Twenty-two Years’ Observation and Work in Open-Air Sanatoria (London: Ballière, 1922). RDP D. H. Lawrence, Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). S Donald O. Stewart, Sanatorium: A Novel (London: Chatto and Windus, 1930). W Virginia Woolf, The Waves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)..
Recommended publications
  • Idea of the West in the Magic Mountain Literary and Cultural Approaches
    Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture University of Groningen Palacký University of Olomouc March 2012 Idea of The West in The Magic Mountain Literary and Cultural Approaches Submitted by: Gonca Topal S2043831 Supervised by: Professor W.E. Krul Dr. Jozef Matula Goettingen, Germany 20.03.2012 Table of Contents I. Introduction …....................................................................................... 1 I.i.Introduction to the Novel and Translations ........................................... 2 I.ii Methods of Analysis …......................................................................... 3 I.iii Specific Approach to the Novel and Past Studies ..….......................... 5 I.iv Defining 'The West' Through Literature …................….................... 8 II. Settembrini and Castorp …..................................................................... 11 II.i Initial Impressions on Settembrini …................................................... 11 II.ii Castorp's Links to Mann …................................................................. 14 II.ii.i Tradition …................................................................................ 16 II.iii Settembrini the Pedagogue …............................................................ 18 II.iii.i Classicism …............................................................................. 19 II.iv The Initial Advice …........................................................................... 19 II.v Settembrini's Links to Mann …..........................................................
    [Show full text]
  • RILKE and the MODERNIST TRADITION: a BRIEF LOOK at “ARCHAIC TORSO of ••• APOLLO”* Pyeaam ABBASI**
    Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi The Journal of International Social Research Cilt: 6 Sayı: 24 Volume: 6 Issue: 24 Kış 2013 Winter 2013 www.sosyalarastirmalar.com Issn: 1307-9581 RILKE AND THE MODERNIST TRADITION: A BRIEF LOOK AT “ARCHAIC TORSO OF ••• APOLLO”* Pyeaam ABBASI** Abstract The twentieth century is associated with drastic changes as well as disintegration of old beliefs and grand narratives. Modern poets felt that it was high time they searched for new potentialities of language and made changes in form in order to express and explore changes the world was experiencing. The oneness of the world within and the world without is not peculiar to Rilke. He explores human consciousness as well as the interaction between human and the non-human world. This paper argues that his poetry is an invitation to the reader to participate and create. In “Archaic Torso of Apollo” the transfixed poet finds the torso full of life and vitality, a complete work of art and suggestive of the modernist tradition. As a modern poet Rilke would see the world within and the world without as the same aspects of each other. He believes that existence consists of interactions between things and the perceiving selves and that the inner world, familiar to our consciousness, is continuous with, even identical to, the material world we think of as exterior to our conscious selves. The interaction between the poet (subject) and the torso (subject) creates the sense of transformation. The article concludes that transformation seems to be the most critical change that the modern man needs to experience in the chaotic and disjointed world of the 20 th century.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernist Permabulations Through Time and Space
    Journal of the British Academy, 4, 197–219. DOI 10.5871/jba/004.197 Posted 18 October 2016. © The British Academy 2016 Modernist perambulations through time and space: From Enlightened walking to crawling, stalking, modelling and street-walking Lecture in Modern Languages read 19 May 2016 ANNE FUCHS Fellow of the Academy Abstract: Analysing diverse modes of walking across a wide range of texts from the Enlightenment period and beyond, this article explores how the practice of walking was discovered by philosophers, educators and writers as a rich discursive trope that stood for competing notions of the morally good life. The discussion proceeds to then investigate how psychological, philosophical and moral interpretations of bad prac- tices of walking in particular resurface in texts by Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and the interwar writer Irmgard Keun. It is argued that literary modernism transformed walking from an Enlightenment trope signifying progress into the embodiment of moral and epistemological ambivalence. In this process, walking becomes an expression of the disconcerting experience of modernity. The paper concludes with a discussion of walking as a gendered performance: while the male walkers in the modernist texts under discussion suffer from a bad gait that leads to ruination, the new figure of the flâneuse manages to engage in pleasurable walking by abandoning the Enlightenment legacy of the good gait. Keywords: modes of walking, discursive trope, Enlightenment discourse, modernism, modernity, moral and epistemological ambivalence, gender, flâneuse. Walking on one’s two legs is an essential but ordinary skill that, unlike cycling, skate-boarding, roller-skating or ballroom dancing, does not require special proficiency, aptitude or thought—unless, of course, we are physically impaired.
    [Show full text]
  • Halliwell, Martin. "Modernism and Adaptation."
    6 MARTIN HALLIWELL Modernism and adaptation Film adaptation has always had a love–hate relationship with literary mod- ernism. A creative union seemed almost certain in the 1910s and 1920s, though. Modernist writers were fascinated with visual media; German the- orist Walter Benjamin proclaimed film the definitive modern form; and the modernist magazine Close Up (1927–33) was forging aesthetic links between film and literary culture ‘‘from the angles of art, experiment, and possibi- lity.’’1 The energies of literary and cinematic modernism in the years either side of World War I promised an imaginative movement beyond the limits of written and visual forms. Many modernist writers could be ‘‘profoundly cinematic even when not fully cognizant of it’’; filmmakers such as D. W. Griffith, Georges Me´lie`s and Eric von Stroheim were drawn to the written word because it lent early cinema aesthetic validity; and two 1928 versions of The Fall of the House of Usher by French director Jean Epstein and American team James Sibley Watson Jr. and Melville Webber showed what could be achieved by transforming Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tale into visually provo- cative cinema.2 However, when it comes to cinematic adaptations of modernist fiction filmmakers have often found themselves faced with major technical pro- blems. Critics Gilberto Perez and Sam Girgus have argued that these pro- blems derive from the way in which modernist culture exacerbates the tension between film as a ‘‘reflective’’ form (representing and documenting) and a ‘‘creative’’ medium (reworking and transforming).3 This tension is true of all adaptations, but is particularly acute within the framework of modern- ism for three main reasons.
    [Show full text]
  • Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory
    UC Irvine FlashPoints Title The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11z5g0mz ISBN 978081013 5550 Author Heaney, Emma Publication Date 2017-08-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The New Woman The FlashPoints series is devoted to books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, and that are distinguished both by their historical grounding and by their theoretical and conceptual strength. Our books engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how liter- ature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Series titles are available online at http://escholarship.org/uc/fl ashpoints. series editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA), Edi- tor Emeritus; Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Editor Emerita; Michelle Clayton (Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University); Edward Dimendberg (Film and Media Studies, Visual Studies, and European Languages and Studies, UC Irvine), Founding Editor; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Editor Emerita; Nouri Gana (Comparative Lit- erature and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA); Susan Gillman (Lit- erature, UC Santa Cruz), Coordinator; Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz), Founding Editor A complete list of titles begins on p.
    [Show full text]
  • A Surrealist Reading: Formlessness and Nondifferentiation in Yitzhak Orpaz’S the Hunting of the Gazelle (Tseyd Ha-Tsviyah, 1966) a Cycle of Three Stories*
    A SURREALIST READING: FORMLESSNESS AND NONDIFFERENTIATION IN YITZHAK ORPAZ’S THE HUNTING OF THE GAZELLE (TSEYD HA-TSVIYAH, 1966) A CYCLE OF THREE STORIES* GIULIA F MILLER** Introduction The research for this paper was initiated by the following question: Why is it that avant-gardes literary trends such as Futurism and Expressionism have been evidently incorporated into Modern Hebrew poetry and prose – alongside detailed and comprehensive critical discourse regarding this incorporation – whereas the same cannot be said of Surrealism? There is no official Hebrew or Israeli Surrealist movement or extensive critical study of Hebrew Surrealism either in literature or in the visual arts and – as I shall demonstrate – this particular absence is true in only a few other countries and consequently Israel stands out in being one of these countries.1 The question thus raised two concerns: the first, which cannot be denied, is the complete absence of a collective, national Israeli affiliation with Surrealism and the second, which is more problematic, is the seeming lack of a Surrealist influence upon Modern Hebrew literature.2 The latter concern is not as relevant to other national literatures simply because so many countries have or have had nationally affiliated Surrealist movements, which in turn suggests an impact. The fact that there has never been a Hebrew or Israeli equivalent renders the concern more pertinent. My question then developed into something of a more historicist nature: is it possible that there are instances of Hebrew Surrealism within literature that are the result of an inner poetic need rather than any conscious affiliation with the movement? If so, how would we define this particular Surrealism and what would it signify? My response to these questions was originally twofold: first I analysed a selection of little known Modern Hebrew texts from the nineteen thirties that do surprisingly suggest a direct influence by the French Surrealist movement in particular on Modern Hebrew literature.
    [Show full text]
  • Style in Death in Venice: Mann, Visconti, Britten
    1 ‘What could art and virtue mean to him now, when he might reap the advantages of chaos?’ Style in Death in Venice: Mann, Visconti, Britten Jonathan Rees An appreciation of the intricacies of style is fundamental to a modernist reading of Death in Venice in its iterations as novella (1911), film (1971) and opera (1973). Yet, it is problematic to assume that the styles adopted by Thomas Mann, Luchino Visconti and Benjamin Britten are intrinsically modernist. Indeed, critics including Ernst Grabovszki, Hans Rudolf Vaget and Gary Schmidgall have all commented on the conservative approach of these artists.1 Furthermore, the very idea of a modernist style is often anachronistic. As Michael Bell outlines ‘a central paradox of Modernism [is that] the most sophisticated achievement of the present is a return to, or a new appreciation of, the archaic.’2 Coupled with these initial difficulties is that the three texts originate from different parts of Europe, at different ends of the twentieth-century. As a result, there are logistical and temporal challenges involved in identifying an overarching modernist style that is discernible in them. And of course, there are the mediums in which the texts appear to consider also. Nonetheless, a more nuanced understanding of modernist style, which may alleviate some of these tensions, can be accomplished. As Malcolm Bradbury and James 1 See Ernst Grabovszki, ‘Literary Movements of the 1890s: Impressionism, Symbolism, and fin-de- siecle Austria’, in German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1899, ed. Clayton Koelb and Eric Downing (Rochester, NY and Suffolk: Camden House, 2005), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Old and New in Modernist Art
    Chapter 2: Old and New in Modernist Art Mr. Thomas T. Baxter presents what appears to be a figure of Christ teaching a dickey-bird to chew worms. This work is labelled "St. Francis" (D‟Asise). I cannot concede his background but the face is remarkable; it is painted with very great skill, and the frenetic modernist who rushes by the picture merely because of the demoded subject-matter will miss one of the best pieces of detail in the exhibition. (Ezra pound, writing as B. H. Dias, in The New Age for January 17, 1918--22.12.235, emphasis added) Among the many kinds of artists, it may be that there are some who are hybrid. Some, that is to say, bore deeper and deeper into the stuff of their own art; others are always making raids into the lands of others. Sickert, it may be, is among the hybrids, the raiders. But . he is probably the best painter now living in England. (Virginia Woolf, writing in 1933, The Captain's Death Bed and Other Essays, 201-202, emphasis added) In 1918, we find Ezra Pound worrying about "the frenetic modernist" who will miss something of great beauty because its subject matter, which Pound himself has mocked, is "demoded." And, as late as 1933, we find Virginia Woolf, reporting on a conversation in "Bloomsbury" about Walter Sickert, in which a consensus is reached that this derivative painter, whose work is often naturalistic in its content, and might well have been associated by Woolf with her despised Edwardians, is the best that England has to offer.
    [Show full text]
  • FT Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2003 Domesticity and the modernist aesthetic : F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein Allison Elise Carey Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Carey, Allison Elise, "Domesticity and the modernist aesthetic : F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2003. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5115 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Allison Elise Carey entitled "Domesticity and the modernist aesthetic : F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Allen Dunn, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Allison Elise Careyentitled "Domesticity and the ModernistAesthetic: F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein." I have examinedthe finalpaper copy of this dissertation forform and content and recommend that it be accepted in partialfulfillment of the requirements for the degreeof Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English.
    [Show full text]
  • Hermann Hesse As Ambivalent Modernist Theodore Jackson Washington University in St
    Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) January 2010 Hermann Hesse as Ambivalent Modernist Theodore Jackson Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd Recommended Citation Jackson, Theodore, "Hermann Hesse as Ambivalent Modernist" (2010). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 167. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/167 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Examination Committee: Lutz Koepnick, Chair Matt Erlin Paul Michael Lützeler Stamos Metzidakis Richard Ruland Stephan Schindler HERMANN HESSE AS AMBIVALENT MODERNIST by Theodore Saul Jackson A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2010 Saint Louis, Missouri copyright by Theodore Saul Jackson 2010 Acknowledgements I am indebted to the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures as well as the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for providing funding for this project in the form of a dissertation fellowship for the 2009–2010 school year, and for continuous funding throughout my graduate career. Special thanks are in order for my advisor, Lutz Koepnick, and the rest of my research advisory committee for reading drafts and providing valuable feedback during the writing process. I would also like to thank the German-American Fulbright Commission for providing me with a year in which I could complete valuable research on Hesse’s life and on the organizations of the German youth movement.
    [Show full text]
  • Baudelaire's Influence on the Modernist Poetry of T.S. Eliot
    Baudelaire’s Influence on the Modernist Poetry of T.S. Eliot Tuğçe Kaptan1 Abstract This study explores the transformation of Paris and its effect on the new movement Symbolism which influences American modernism. This movement is explained through the works of Charles Baudelaire who has an enormous impact on T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. Since symbolism was the only movement that modernist writers of America found close to their era. They could not break off; on the contrary they took some essential parts of it which was a main source of inspiration. Therefore, as a symbolist poet, Charles Baudelaire influenced T.S. Eliot and like Baudelaire T.S. Eliot focused on the brokenness and falseness of modern experience and he found symbolism close to his era, therefore he took some essential parts as an inspiration. For this reason, the influence of symbolism on Modernist literature cannot be ignored. Keywords: Modernism, Symbolism, Brokenness, Falseness, Modern Experience, Modernist Literature, Transformation Özet Bu çalışma, Paris’in dönüşümünü ve Amerikan Modernizmine tesir eden Sembolizmin bu dönüşüm üzerindeki etkisini inceler. Bu akım T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats ve Ezra Pound gibi yazarlar üzerinde etkili olan Charles Baudelaire’in eserleri ile açıklanmıştır. Amerikan yazarlar sembolizmi kendi çağlarına yakın buldukları için, sembolizmden bağlarını koparamamışlardır, tam tersine sembolizmi ilham kaynağı olarak almışlardır. Bu sebepten dolayı Charles Baudelaire’in T.S. Eliot üzerinde olan etkisi büyüktür ve T.S Eliot da Baudelaire gibi modern hayatın getirmiş olduğu parçalanmışlık ve sahteliğe odaklanmıştır. Sembolizmi ise kendi dönemine daha yakın gördüğü için temel kısımlarını almıştır. 1 Öğr.
    [Show full text]
  • A Gramophone in Every Grave
    History and Technology Vol. 21, No. 3, September 2005, pp. 325–329 ESSAY REVIEW A Gramophone in Every Grave TheTaylorGHAT119856.sgm10.1080/07341510500198735History0734-1512Essay2005213000000SeptemberThomasMisaDepartmentmisa@iit.edu Review and& and Francis (print)/1477-2620Francis Technologyof HumanitiesIllinois Group 2005 LtdSenses Ltd (online) Institute of TechnologyChicagoIL60616USA of Modernism: Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics SARA DANIUS Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002 When the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp, first glimpses the chest of the woman he loves, it is a seminal image for students of modern literature and modern technology. The X-ray portrait penetrates through the surface layers of clothes and skin, and reveals an inner world of delicate bones, internal organs, and ghostlike flesh. The X-ray keepsake is a new form of memory, mediated by technology. In this smart and engaging book, Sara Danius brings a historicizing approach and close textual analysis to key passages in the modernist canon. The ques- tions she asks of Mann’s Magic Mountain, Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, and James Joyce’s Ulysses are difficult and intelligent ones. How did photography, gramophones, motion pictures, city trams, automobiles, and airplanes affect modern- ist culture? How did modernist writers engage these perception-changing technolo- gies? Why is the obvious presence of technology in their works hard to see? How can we conceptualize these changes in technology, culture, and aesthetics? To begin, she suggests that a deep-seated antitechnological bias accounts for the great silence about technology in the standard interpretations of literary modernism. The bias began with the modernists themselves (making intellectual space in a technol- ogy saturated culture) and it continued with the legion of critics and interpreters who followed in their wake.
    [Show full text]