1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910811438403321

Autore

Barrows Adam

Titolo

The cosmic time of empire : modern Britain and world literature / / Adam Barrows

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, 2011

ISBN

1-283-27744-1

9786613277442

0-520-94815-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (225 p.)

Collana

Flash points ; ; 3

Disciplina

823/.80933

Soggetti

English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

English fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Modernism (Literature) - English-speaking countries

Time in literature

Time - Political aspects

Time - Systems and standards

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Standard Time, Greenwich, and the Cosmopolitan Clock -- Chapter 2. "Turning From the Shadows That Follow Us" -- Chapter 3. At the Limits of Imperial Time; or, Dracula Must Die! -- Chapter 4. "The Shortcomings of Timetables" -- Chapter 5. "A Few Hours Wrong" -- Conclusion. A Postmodern Politics of Time? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Combining original historical research with literary analysis, Adam Barrows takes a provocative look at the creation of world standard time in 1884 and rethinks the significance of this remarkable moment in modernism for both the processes of imperialism and for modern literature. As representatives from twenty-four nations argued over adopting the Prime Meridian, and thereby measuring time in relation to Greenwich, England, writers began experimenting with new ways of representing human temporality. Barrows finds this experimentation in works as varied as Victorian adventure novels, high modernist texts,



and South Asian novels-including the work of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, H. Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad. Demonstrating the investment of modernist writing in the problems of geopolitics and in the public discourse of time, Barrows argues that it is possible, and productive, to rethink the politics of modernism through the politics of time.