1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910814234903321

Autore

Cobley Evelyn

Titolo

Modernism and the culture of efficiency : ideology and fiction / / Evelyn Cobley

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2009

©2009

ISBN

1-4426-9743-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (355 p.)

Disciplina

306.4/6

Soggetti

Modernism (Literature)

Industrial efficiency - Social aspects

Technological innovations - Social aspects

English fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Technology in literature

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Efficiency and the Great Exhibition of 1851 : elation and doubt -- Efficient machines and docile bodies : Henry Ford and F.W. Taylor -- An experiment in (in)efficient organization and social engineering : Auschwitz -- Efficiency and disciplinary power : the iron cage and the suburb -- Efficiency and population control : Wells, Shaw, Orwell, Forster -- "Criminal" efficiency : Joseph Conrad's Heart of darkness -- Efficient management : D.H. Lawrence's Women in love -- Efficiency and perverse outcomes : Ford Madox Ford's The good soldier -- Efficiency and its alternatives : E.M. Forster's Howards end -- Efficiency and the perfect society : Aldous Huxley's Brave new world.

Sommario/riassunto

Cobley's close readings of modernist British fiction by writers as diverse as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Conrad, and E.M. Forster identify characters whose attitudes and behaviour patterns indirectly manifest cultural anxieties that can be traced to the conflicted logic of efficiency.