The Cosmic Web : Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century / N. Katherine Hayles.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Book collections on Project MUSEPublisher: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1984Manufacturer: Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2018Copyright date: ©1984Description: 1 online resource (210 pages)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9781501722981
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Online resources:
Contents:
Introduction -- pt. I. Mathematical and scientific model -- ch. 1. Spinning the web : representative field theories and their implications -- pt. II. Literary strategies -- ch. 2. Drawn to the web : the quality of rhetoric in Pirsig's Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance -- ch. 3. Evasion : the field of the unconscious in D.H. Lawrence -- ch. 4. Ambivalence : symmetry, asymmetry, and the physics of time reversal in Nabokov's Ada -- ch. 5. Subversion : infinite series and transfinite numbers in Borges's fictions -- ch. 6. Caught in the web : cosmology and the point of (no) return in Pynchon's Gravity's rainbow -- References Cited -- Index.
Summary: From the central concept of the field--which depicts the world as a mutually interactive whole, with each part connected to every other part by an underlying field-- have come models as diverse as quantum mathematics and Saussure's theory of language. In The Cosmic Web, N. Katherine Hayles seeks to establish the scope of the field concept and to assess its importance for contemporary thought. She then explores the literary strategies that are attributable directly or indirectly to the new paradigm; among the texts at which she looks closely are Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Nabokov's Ada, D.H. Lawrence's early novels and essays, Borges's fiction, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
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Introduction -- pt. I. Mathematical and scientific model -- ch. 1. Spinning the web : representative field theories and their implications -- pt. II. Literary strategies -- ch. 2. Drawn to the web : the quality of rhetoric in Pirsig's Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance -- ch. 3. Evasion : the field of the unconscious in D.H. Lawrence -- ch. 4. Ambivalence : symmetry, asymmetry, and the physics of time reversal in Nabokov's Ada -- ch. 5. Subversion : infinite series and transfinite numbers in Borges's fictions -- ch. 6. Caught in the web : cosmology and the point of (no) return in Pynchon's Gravity's rainbow -- References Cited -- Index.

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From the central concept of the field--which depicts the world as a mutually interactive whole, with each part connected to every other part by an underlying field-- have come models as diverse as quantum mathematics and Saussure's theory of language. In The Cosmic Web, N. Katherine Hayles seeks to establish the scope of the field concept and to assess its importance for contemporary thought. She then explores the literary strategies that are attributable directly or indirectly to the new paradigm; among the texts at which she looks closely are Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Nabokov's Ada, D.H. Lawrence's early novels and essays, Borges's fiction, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

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