Modernism and Time
The Logic of Abundance in Literature, Science, and Culture, 1880–1930

This book offers a powerful reassessment of the politics and culture of modernism.

Ronald Schleifer (Author)

9780521120159, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 September 2009

296 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

"Overall, this volume is well written and researched, and contains an index with an impressive number of subcategories...With its wide span of focal points, Modernism and Time should be of considerable interest to scholars in both the humanities and the sciences." Colloquia Germanica

In Modernism and Time, Ronald Schleifer analyses the transition from the Enlightenment to post-Enlightenment ways of understanding in Western thought. Schleifer argues that this transition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century expresses itself centrally in an altered conception of temporality. He examines this period's remarkable breaks with the past in literature, music, and the arts more generally. Whereas Enlightenment thought sees time as a homogenous, neutral medium, in which events and actions take place, post-Enlightenment thought sees time as discontinuous and inexorably bound up with both the subjects and events that seem to inhabit it. This fundamental change of perception, Schleifer argues, takes place across disciplines as varied as physics, economics and philosophy. Schleifer's study engages with the work of writers and thinkers as varied as George Eliot, Walter Benjamin, Einstein and Russell, and offers a powerful reassessment of the politics and culture of modernism.

Introduction: Post-Enlightenment modernism and the experience of time
Part I. Post-Enlightenment Apprehension: 1. The Enlightenment, abundance, and postmodernity
2. Temporal allegories: George Eliot, Walter Benjamin, and the redemption of time
3. The second industrial revolution: history, knowledge, and subjectivity
Part II. Logics of Abundance: 4. The natural history of time: mathematics and meaning in Einstein and Russell
5. Analogy and example: Heisenberg, linguistic negation, and the language of quantum physics
6. The global aesthetics of genre: Mikhail Bakhtin and the borders of modernity.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]