The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics - Softcover

Danius, Sara

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9780801488009: The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0801488001 ISBN 13: 9780801488009
Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In The Senses of Modernism, Sara Danius develops a radically new theoretical and historical understanding of high modernism. The author closely analyzes Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and James Joyce's Ulysses as narratives of the sweeping changes that affected high and low culture in the age of technological reproduction.

In her discussion of the years from 1880 to 1930, Danius proposes that the high-modernist aesthetic is inseparable from a technologically mediated crisis of the senses. She reveals the ways in which categories of perceiving and knowing are realigned when technological devices are capable of reproducing sense data. Sparked by innovations such as chronophotography, phonography, radiography, cinematography, and technologies of speed, this sudden shift in perceptual abilities had an effect on all arts of the time.

Danius explores how perception, notably sight and hearing, is staged in the three most significant modern novels in German, French, and British literature. The Senses of Modernism connects technological change and formal innovation to transform the study of modernist aesthetics. Danius questions the longstanding acceptance of a binary relationship between high and low culture and describes the complicated relationship between modernism and technology, challenging the conceptual divide between a technological culture and a more properly aesthetic one.

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About the Author

Sara Danius is Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Uppsala University, Sweden. During the 2001-2002 academic year she is a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. She is the author of Proust's Motor.

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Publisher
Cornell University Press
Publication date
2002
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0801488001
ISBN 13 
9780801488009
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
264
Rating
  • 3.93 out of 5 stars
    14 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780801438998: The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0801438993 ISBN 13:  9780801438998
Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002
Hardcover