Modernism, narrative, and humanism / Paul Sheehan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheehan, Paul, 1960- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930--Criticism and interpretation.

Lawrence, D. H.

Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941--Criticism and interpretation.

Woolf, Virginia.

Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924--Criticism and interpretation.

Conrad, Joseph.

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989--Criticism and interpretation.

Beckett, Samuel.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Modernism (Literature)--Great Britain.

Modernism (Literature).

Humanism in literature.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 234 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Modernism, Narrative & Humanism

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Modernism, Narrative and Humanism, Paul Sheehan attempts to redefine modernist narrative for the twenty-first century. For Sheehan modernism presents a major form of critique of the fundamental presumptions of humanism. By pairing key modernist writers with philosophical critics of the humanist tradition, he shows how modernists sought to discover humanism's inhuman potential. He examines the development of narrative during the modernist period and sets it against, among others, the nineteenth-century philosophical writings of Schopenhauer , Darwin and Nietzsche. Focusing on the major novels and poetics of Conrad, Lawrence, Woolf and Beckett, Sheehan investigates these writers' mistrust of humanist orthodoxy and their consequent transformations and disfigurations of narrative order. He reveals the crucial link between the modernist novel's narrative concerns and its philosophical orientation in a book that will be of compelling interest to scholars of modernism and literary theory.

Contents:

Introduction: The anthropometric turn

Narrating the animal, amputating the soul

Conrad and technology: homo ex machina

The Lawrentian transcendent: after the fall

Woolf's luminance: time out of mind

Doubting Beckett: voices descant, stories still

Conclusion: Humanness unbound.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-230) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-13380-7

0-521-09912-9

0-511-14790-2

0-511-12060-5

0-511-30505-2

1-280-16079-9

0-511-04562-X

0-511-48530-1

OCLC:

52613793