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

• Record Nr.: UNINA9911139137303321
• Autore: Barrows Adam
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Berkeley, : University of California Press, 2011
• ISBN: 9786613277442; 9781283277440; 1283277441; 9780520948150; 0520948157
• 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.