The Cosmic Web Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century / N. Katherine Hayles.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hayles, N. Katherine, 1943-

en Book Program, National Endowment for the Humanities Op, Author.

Contributor:

en Book Program, funder.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and science.

Literature, Modern--20th century--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (208 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1984.

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

N. Katherine Hayles is James B. Duke Professor of Literature at Duke University. She is the author of many books, including How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, and My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts.

Summary:

From the central concept of the field-which depicts the world as a mutually interactive whole, with each part connected to every other part by an underlying field- have come models as diverse as quantum mathematics and Saussure's theory of language. In The Cosmic Web, N. Katherine Hayles seeks to establish the scope of the field concept and to assess its importance for contemporary thought. She then explores the literary strategies that are attributable directly or indirectly to the new paradigm; among the texts at which she looks closely are Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Nabokov's Ada, D. H. Lawrence's early novels and essays, Borges's fiction, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I. Mathematical and Scientific Models

Chapter I. Spinning The Web

Part II. Literary Strategies

Chapter 2. Drawn to the Web

3. Evasion: The Field of the Unconscious in D. H. Lawrence

Chapter 4. Ambivalence

5. Subversion

Chapter 6. Caught In The Web Cosmology and the Point of (No) Return in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

References Cited

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Bibliography: p. 199-204.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8014-1742-2

1-5017-2297-2

OCLC:

1057676723