Einstein's Wake (Relativity, Metaphor, and Modernist Literature)

Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-19-818640-3
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 513 g

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 rarely considered 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 which modernist 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 legacy in literary appropriations of scientific metaphors, with particular attention to Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, and T. S. Eliot.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Whitworth, Michael H.

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Physik Quantenphysik Relativität, Gravitation
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Human- und Sozialwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- 1: The Specialist, the Generalist, and the Popularist

- 2: Things Fall Apart: The Secret Agent and Literary Entropy

- 3: Descriptionism: Consuming Sensations

- 4: An Entente Cordiale? The New Relations of Literature and Science

- 5: Invisible Men and Fractured Atoms

- 6: Simultaneity: A Return Ticket to Waterloo

- 7: Non-Euclidean Humanity

- Conclusion

- Select Bibliography

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

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