Modernism, Narrative and Humanism

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Modernism, Narrative and Humanism......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Preface......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 15
INTRODUCTION - The anthropometric turn......Page 17
GROUNDWORK: SOME TERMS AND TENETS......Page 22
THE VOICE-MACHINE COMPLEX......Page 26
MAPPING MODERNISM: CRISIS IN FORM......Page 29
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE OF MODERNISM......Page 33
TOWARDS THEORY......Page 35
1 Narrating the animal, amputating the soul......Page 40
Discontinuity: Marx and Wilde......Page 44
The measure of the human......Page 48
Darwin to Nietzsche: down the shaft of being......Page 51
Narrating the animal......Page 53
The missing link: ‘metaphysical man’......Page 56
Excursus: Hegel’s Bildungsroman of Spirit......Page 57
The interesting animal......Page 61
Antinarrative (I): becoming what one is......Page 64
Antinarrative (II): the rapture of recurrence......Page 65
CREATURES CONDEMNED TO MEANING......Page 69
2 Conrad and technology: homo ex machina......Page 72
Rational animals, affective machines......Page 76
I SCHOPENHAUER’S BAROQUE SYMPHONY......Page 78
Humanism without the human: becoming what one is not......Page 79
Schopenhauer as novelist: a symphonic world-poem......Page 82
The mechanical inhuman......Page 84
II CONRAD’S ACCIDENTAL TRAGEDIES......Page 88
Lord Jim: disturbing the kosmos......Page 91
Nostromo: material interests and mechanomorphism......Page 95
FALLING INTO CONSCIOUSNESS......Page 100
3 The Lawrentian transcendent: after the fall......Page 103
The decline of the West......Page 106
Propriating metaphysical man......Page 111
After the Fall: narrating finitude......Page 113
Full disclosure: the human without the ‘human’......Page 116
II LAWRENCE’S IMPERSONAL SOURCE......Page 119
Sons and Lovers: Soul mining......Page 122
Women in Love: apocalypse now......Page 127
ANTHROPOS AGONISTES......Page 134
4 Woolf’s luminance: time out of mind......Page 137
Bergson, Lewis and the rehumanisation of time......Page 139
Virginia Woolf: timelines and lifelines......Page 141
Translations: human, nature, technology......Page 144
The hermeneutical effect: resonance and rupture......Page 150
II TO THE LIGHTHOUSE: LESSONS IN DARKNESS......Page 156
Narrative diffusion: rhythm and melody......Page 158
Several folds of blackness: X-rays and impersonality......Page 160
OUT OF TIME, OUT OF MIND......Page 164
5 Doubting Beckett: voices descant, stories still......Page 166
I MOLLOY: BECKETT’S COMEDY OF UNCERTAINTY......Page 169
Drifting bones in a dismantled world......Page 171
The narrating mind: ‘Sick with thought and fastened to a dying animal’......Page 173
Agitating the calmative......Page 177
Falling in and out of nature......Page 180
Intermezzo: a poetics of impotence......Page 182
III THE UNNAMABLE: TWO SURFACES AND NO THICKNESS......Page 183
Descartes’s dream revisited......Page 184
From obligation to compulsion: taking the measure......Page 186
Dehumanising narrative the voice-machine......Page 190
BECOMING HUMAN: THE DIFFERENCE OF ‘HUMAN-NESS’......Page 192
CONCLUSION Humanness unbound......Page 196
Beckett’s theoretical inheritors......Page 200
Modernism by other means......Page 205
INTRODUCTION......Page 209
I......Page 213
2......Page 217
3......Page 220
4......Page 225
5......Page 226
CONCLUSION......Page 230
PRIMARY SOURCES......Page 233
SECONDARY SOURCES......Page 235
Index......Page 247