Novel Sensations - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture) by Jon Day (Paperback)

About the Book

Concentrating on the work of four major modernist authors - Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis and Samuel Beckett - this book examines the close links between modernist literature and the philosophy of mind..

Book Synopsis

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.

Concentrating on the work of four major modernist authors - Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis and Samuel Beckett - 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.

From the Back Cover

A radical intervention into critical debates over the status of sensation within modernist literature Concentrating on the work of four major modernist authors - Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis and Samuel Beckett - 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. Jon Day is Lecturer in English at King's College, London.

Review Quotes

Day's account of early twentieth century philosophical debates around qualia provides a refreshingly original approach to understanding the representation of minds, bodies, and their relation to the world in modernist writing. A valuable work of historicist criticism, the book demonstrates the limitations of current neuroaesthetic, cognitive/affective and purely phenomenological accounts of the modernist mind.-- "Patricia Waugh, Durham University"

About the Author

Jon Day is Lecturer in English Literature 1900-1945, and Medical Humanities, Kings College London.