Modernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf
<p>This thesis argues for a revised understanding of time in modernist literature. It challenges the longstanding critical tradition that has used the French philosopher Henri Bergson's distinction between clock-time and <em>durée</em> to explicate time in the modernist novel....
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| Format: | Disertacija |
| Jezik: | English |
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2014
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| _version_ | 1826316242335563776 |
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| author | Shackleton, D |
| author2 | Whitworth, M |
| author_facet | Whitworth, M Shackleton, D |
| author_sort | Shackleton, D |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>This thesis argues for a revised understanding of time in modernist literature. It challenges the longstanding critical tradition that has used the French philosopher Henri Bergson's distinction between clock-time and <em>durée</em> to explicate time in the modernist novel. To do so, it replaces Stephen Kern's influential understanding of modernity as characterized by the solidification of a homogenous clock-time, with Peter Osborne’s notion of modernity as structured by a competing range of temporalizations of history.</p> <p>The following chapters then read the fictional and historical writings of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf alongside such a conception of modernity, and show that all these writers explored different versions of historical time. Wells explored geological time in <em>The Time Machine</em> (1895) and <em>An Outline of History</em> (1920), Lawrence adapted Friedrich Nietzsche's thought of eternal recurrence in <em>Women in Love</em> (1920), <em>Movements in European History</em> (1921) and <em>Lady Chatterley's Lover</em> (1928), and Woolf imagined an aeviternal historical continuity and a phenomenological historical time in <em>Between the Acts</em> (1941).</p> <p>By addressing historical time, this thesis enables a reassessment of the politics of modernist time. It challenges the view that the purported modernist exploration of a Bergsonian private time constitutes an asocial and ahistorical retreat from the political. Rather, by transferring Osborne's notion of a 'politics of time' to the literary sphere, this study argues that the competing configurations of politically-charged historical time in literary modernism, form the analogue of the competing versions of such a time within modernity, emblematized by the contrasting accounts of historical time of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:36:36Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:32db08e5-47ce-4b45-9a80-abcbb37d1f9e |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-09T03:41:20Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:32db08e5-47ce-4b45-9a80-abcbb37d1f9e2024-12-07T12:22:25ZModernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia WoolfThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:32db08e5-47ce-4b45-9a80-abcbb37d1f9eEnglish Language and LiteratureEnglishOxford University Research Archive - Valet2014Shackleton, DWhitworth, M<p>This thesis argues for a revised understanding of time in modernist literature. It challenges the longstanding critical tradition that has used the French philosopher Henri Bergson's distinction between clock-time and <em>durée</em> to explicate time in the modernist novel. To do so, it replaces Stephen Kern's influential understanding of modernity as characterized by the solidification of a homogenous clock-time, with Peter Osborne’s notion of modernity as structured by a competing range of temporalizations of history.</p> <p>The following chapters then read the fictional and historical writings of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf alongside such a conception of modernity, and show that all these writers explored different versions of historical time. Wells explored geological time in <em>The Time Machine</em> (1895) and <em>An Outline of History</em> (1920), Lawrence adapted Friedrich Nietzsche's thought of eternal recurrence in <em>Women in Love</em> (1920), <em>Movements in European History</em> (1921) and <em>Lady Chatterley's Lover</em> (1928), and Woolf imagined an aeviternal historical continuity and a phenomenological historical time in <em>Between the Acts</em> (1941).</p> <p>By addressing historical time, this thesis enables a reassessment of the politics of modernist time. It challenges the view that the purported modernist exploration of a Bergsonian private time constitutes an asocial and ahistorical retreat from the political. Rather, by transferring Osborne's notion of a 'politics of time' to the literary sphere, this study argues that the competing configurations of politically-charged historical time in literary modernism, form the analogue of the competing versions of such a time within modernity, emblematized by the contrasting accounts of historical time of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin.</p> |
| spellingShingle | English Language and Literature Shackleton, D Modernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf |
| title | Modernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf |
| title_full | Modernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf |
| title_fullStr | Modernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf |
| title_full_unstemmed | Modernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf |
| title_short | Modernism and the politics of time: time and history in the work of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf |
| title_sort | modernism and the politics of time time and history in the work of h g wells d h lawrence and virginia woolf |
| topic | English Language and Literature |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT shackletond modernismandthepoliticsoftimetimeandhistoryintheworkofhgwellsdhlawrenceandvirginiawoolf |