Fiction refracts science : modernist writers from Proust to Borges / Allen Thiher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thiher, Allen, 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and science.

Science in literature.

Fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

xii, 297 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of Missouri Press, [2005]

Summary:

"Examines the relationship between science and the fiction developed by modernists, including Musil, Proust, Kafka, and Joyce. Looks at Pascalian and Newtonian cosmology, Darwinism, epistemology, relativity theory, quantum mechanics, the development of modernist and postmodern fiction, positivism, and finally works by Woolf, Faulkner, and Borges"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : prefatory thoughts on two or more cultures

What the modernists knew about the history of science from Pascal to Heisenberg

Robert Musil and the dilemma of modernist epistemology

Proust, Poincaré, and contingency

Kafka's search for laws

James Joyce and the laws of everything

Modernist thought experiments after Joyce

Conclusion : science and postmodernity.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-285) and index.

ISBN:

0826215807

OCLC:

57391927