２０世紀文学における新たな人間像 The New Human in Literature : Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society after 1900

Rosendahl Thomsen, Mads

Bloomsbury Academic USA（2013/09発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 256 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781441183194
• DDC分類 809.93350904

Full Description

Twentieth-century literature changed understandings of what it meant to be human. Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, in this historical overview, presents a record of literature's changing ideas of mankind, questioning the degree to which literature records and creates visions of the new human.

Grounded in the theory of Niklas Luhmann and drawing on canonical works, Thomsen uses literary changes in the mind, body and society to define the new human. He begins with the modernist minds of Virginia Woolf, Williams Carlos Williams and Louis-Ferdinand Celine's, discusses the society-changing concepts envisioned by Chinua Achebe, Mo Yan and Orhan Pamuk. He concludes with science fiction, discussing Don DeLillo and Michel Houellebecq's ideas of revolutionizing man through biotechnology.

This is a study about imagination, aesthetics and ethics that demonstrates literature's capacity to not only imagine the future but portray the conflicting desires between individual and various collectives better than any other media. A study that heightens reflections on human evolution and posthumanism.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part 1 The Triune Human

1 A Systemic View of the Human
2 An Emerging Cultural History of the Twentieth Century
3 History, Technique, Imagination
4 The New Human and the Medium of Literature

Part 2 Self-modernization

5 Virginia Woolf
6 William Carlos Williams
7 Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Part 3 The Grand Projects

8 Chinua Achebe
9 Mo Yan
10 Orhan Pamuk

Part 4 The Final Frontier

11 Literature as Lab
12 Don DeLillo
13 Michel Houellebecq

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index