Novel Sensations: Modernist Fiction and the Problem of Qualia

This book offers novel and insightful readings of key modernist authors within their philosophical contexts, critiques neuroaesthetic approaches to literary criticism, and proposes new ways of thinking about the relationship between philosophy, literature, and technology in modernist studies, focusing on the work of four major modernist authors.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 30 September 2020
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

A radical intervention into critical debates over the status of sensation within modernist literature Offers novel and insightful readings of key modernist authors within their philosophical contextsCritiques a range of neuroaesthetic approaches to literary criticismProposes new ways of thinking about the relationship between philosophy,literature and technology within modernist studies. This book examines the close links between modernist literature and the philosophy of mind by historicising the qualia debate and situating it within its cultural and literary contexts. It stages interventions into a range of academic debates: over the status of sensations and sense data within modernist fiction, over the scope and possibility of neuroaesthetic approaches to literary criticism, and over the relationship between literature, philosophy and technology in the modernist moment. Concentrating on the work of four major modernist authors Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis and Samuel Beckett, the book explores the ways in which modernist literature engages with the philosophy of mind, and how this engagement shapes our understanding of modernist texts. By historicising the qualia debate and situating it within its cultural and literary contexts, the book offers novel and insightful readings of key modernist authors within their philosophical contexts. It critiques a range of neuroaesthetic approaches to literary criticism and proposes new ways of thinking about the relationship between philosophy, literature and technology within modernist studies.

Weight: 458g
Dimension: 240 x 162 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474458399