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The blinding torch : modern British fiction and the discourse of civilization

Author: Brian W Shaffer
Publisher: Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, ©1993.
Edition/Format:   Book : State or province government publication : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
From the end of the nineteenth century until World War II, questions concerning the ideal nature and current state of "civilization" preoccupied the British public. In a provocative work of both cultural and literary criticism, Brian W. Shaffer explores this debate, showing how representative novels of five British modernists - Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Malcolm Lowry - address  Read more...
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Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Shaffer, Brian W., 1960-
Blinding torch.
Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, c1993
(OCoLC)624347824
Material Type: Government publication, State or province government publication
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Brian W Shaffer
ISBN: 0870238310 9780870238314
OCLC Number: 26810187
Description: xii, 208 p. ; 25 cm.
Contents: 1. Introduction: Literature and the Discourse of Civilization. The Blinding Torch: Civilization in Literature. Coming to Terms with "Civilization" The Law of Civilization: Progress Enthroned or Disease Unleashed? The Will to Civilization: Nation-State or State of Mind? The Rhetoric of Civilization: Preservation or Propaganda? Modernist Fiction and Cultural Discourse --
2. "Rebarbarizing Civilization": Conrad's African Fiction and Spencerian Sociology. Conrad and Spencer at the Fin de Siecle. Spencer's "Militant/Industrial" Distinction in Heart of Darkness. Spencer's "Rebarbarized" Civilization in Heart of Darkness. Beyond Spencer: The Suggestion of a Military-Industrial Complex in Heart of Darkness. From Progress to Parody: Spencer's "Law" and Conrad's "Outpost" --
3. The London Fog: Civilization as Rhetoric and Game in Conrad. The Rhetoric of Civilization in Heart of Darkness. The Game of Civilization in The Secret Agent --
4. Civilization in Post-Great War Bloomsbury: Woolf's "Twenties" Novels and Bell's Civilization and On British Freedom. Woolf and Bell in the 1920s. Censorship as a Threat to Civilization in Mrs. Dalloway and On British Freedom. Women and Civilization in To the Lighthouse and Civilization. Class in Mrs. Dalloway and Civilization. Bell Ringers: Images of the Man in Woolf's Novels --
5. Discontent and Its Civilization: Rereading Joyce's "Paralyzed" Dubliner. The Illusion of a Future: Gerty MacDowell and Little Chandler. The Myth of Enlightenment: The Experience of Leopold Bloom --
6. The Sense of an Ending: Spenglerian Decline and the Mexican Novels of Lawrence and Lowry. The Literary Fate of The Decline between the Wars. The Spenglerian Shape of Civilization in The Plumed Serpent and Under the Volcano. Spengler Dialogized: The Resistance to Civilization and the. Aesthetics of Decline in The Plumed Serpent and Under the Volcano --
7. The Subject of Civilization: Narcissism as Disease in Lowry's Early Fiction. Narcissus under the Volcano. Self as Civilization: Psychoanalytic Matrices of Narcissism in Under the Volcano. Narcissistic Civilization in Under the Volcano and Ultramarine.
Responsibility: Brian W. Shaffer.

Abstract:

From the end of the nineteenth century until World War II, questions concerning the ideal nature and current state of "civilization" preoccupied the British public. In a provocative work of both cultural and literary criticism, Brian W. Shaffer explores this debate, showing how representative novels of five British modernists - Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Malcolm Lowry - address the same issues that engaged such social theorists as Herbert Spencer, Oswald Spengler, Clive Bell, and Sigmund Freud. In examining the intersection of literary discourse and cultural rhetoric, Shaffer draws on the interpretative strategies of Mikhail Bakhtin, Terry Eagleton, Clifford Geertz, and others. He demonstrates that such disparate fictions as Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, The Plumed Serpent, Dubliners, Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Under the Volcano all portray civilization in the paradoxical image of blindness and insight, obfuscation and enlightenment - as a blinding torch that captivates the eye while it obscures vision.

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