Literature, technology, and modernity, 1860-2000
By: Nicholas Daly.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 161
Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Technology in literature.; Literature and technology -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Modernism (Literature) -- Great Britain.; Railroad travel in literature.; Machinery in literature.; Railroads in literature.
Description: "The central scenario in this fantasy is the crash, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical. Nicholas Daly considers the way human/machine encounters have been imagined from the 1860s on, arguing that such scenes dramatize the modernization of subjectivity. Daly begins with Victorian railway melodramas in which an individual is rescued from the path of the train just in time, and ends with J.G. Ballard's novel Crash in which people seek out such collisions. Daly argues that these collisions dramatize the relationship between the individual and modern industrial society, and suggests that the pleasures of fictional suspense help people to assimilate the speeding up of everyday life.

This book will be of interest to scholars of Victorian literature, modernism and film."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 136-156) and index.