Shadowtime
Subtitle: history and representation in Hardy, Conrad, and George Eliot
By: Jim Reilly.
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1993
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 185
Subjects: Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928 -- Knowledge -- History.; Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Knowledge -- History.; Eliot, George, 1819-1880 -- Knowledge -- History.; English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Historical fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Literature and history.; Mimesis in literature.
Other titles: Shadow time.
Description: Boldly taking up Adorno's assertion that the crisis of twentieth-century art is its inability to represent historical events, Jim Reilly seeks the nineteenth-century roots of this problem and its articulation within the works of Hardy, Conrad and George Eliot. Drawing on the theories of Benjamin, Foucault, Hegel, Lukacs and Nietzsche he constructs a powerful argument across the entire period of historicism's triumph and decline. An outstanding combination of original readings and an indispensable survey, Shadowtime considers nineteenth-century literature in the light of current radical historiography. It poses critical questions about literature's relation to all the cherished principles of historicism: origination, antiquity, historical reconstruction, gender, possession and the very concept of the Real. A major study of realism, modernism and the complex relations of history and aesthetics in the modern period.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-182) and index.