Einstein's Wake Relativity, Metaphor, and Modernist Literature

by Whitworth, Michael H.

• ISBN13: 9780198186403
• ISBN10: 0198186401
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-02-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The revolution in literary form and aesthetic consciousness called modernism arose as the physical sciences were revising their most fundamental concepts: space, time, matter, and the concept of 'science' itself. The coincidence has often been remarked upon in general terms, but rarelyconsidered in detail. Einstein's Wake argues that the interaction of modernism and the 'new physics' is best understood by reference to the metaphors which structured these developments. These metaphors, widely disseminated in the popular science writing of the period, provided a language with whichmodernist writers could articulate their responses to the experience of modernity. Beginning with influential aspects of nineteenth-century physics, Einstein's Wake qualifies the notion that Einstein alone was responsible for literary 'relativity'; it goes on to examine the fine detail of his legacyin literary appropriations of scientific metaphors, with particular attention to Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, and T. S. Eliot.

Author Biography

Michael H. Whitworth is Lecturer in English, University of Wales, Bangor.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(25)
The Specialist, the Generalist, and the Populist	26	(32)
Things Fall Apart: The Secret Agent and Literary Entropy	58	(25)
Descriptionism: Consuming Sensations	83	(28)
An Entente Cordiale? The New Relations of Literature and Science	111	(35)
Invisible Men and Fractured Atoms	146	(24)
Simultaneity: A Return Ticket to Waterloo	170	(28)
Non-Euclidean Humanity	198	(32)
Conclusion	230	(8)
Select Bibliography	238	(9)
Index	247