Modernity and Mobility: Re-reading Wordsworth and De Quincey

IF 0.2 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE
Apalak Das
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In the above quote, Foucault’s description of a train as a heterotopia is a crucial pointer to the significant dimensions that our experience of mobility can add to our definitions of space and time. Movement is widely discussed today across several fields as almost a primary ontological feature of the modern subject. Yet, the unmistakable relation between literary-aesthetic formulations of space-time and the phenomenology of mobile life has remained relatively underexplored. In view of this gap, this article studies William Wordsworth’s “Two Letters” on the Kendal and Windermere Railway and Thomas de Quincey’s essay “The English Mail Coach” for their anxious reflections on the ways in which mechanized mobility disrupts perceptions of locality and constitutes abstractions such as those of nation, history, demography, economic status, and popular taste. As Michael Freeman notes, such changes can often lend shape to the very concept of culture, as it did with the introduction of the railways (18). I show that Wordsworth and De Quincey expressed anxiety about such changes because they saw them as precursors to signal shifts in perceptions of centrality. In his Grundrisse, Karl Marx described the nineteenth-century revolutionary technologies of transport and communication as agents of “the annihilation of space by time.” However, considering that the idea of space can be extended to include experiential domains such as memory, imagination, and personal identity, Marx’s claim seems to be about the annihilation of distance rather than of space – actual or connotative. Wordsworth’s anxiety about the violation of the spatial integrity and sanctity of the Lake District landscape seems to be related to this destruction of distances, since such destruction would
现代性与流动性——重读华兹华斯与德昆西
在上面的引用中,福柯将火车描述为一个异托邦,这是一个关键的指针,表明我们的流动经验可以为我们对空间和时间的定义增加重要的维度。今天,运动作为现代主体的一个主要本体论特征,在多个领域被广泛讨论。然而,时空文学美学公式与流动生活现象学之间的明确关系仍然相对未被充分探索。鉴于这一差距,本文研究了威廉·华兹华斯关于肯德尔和温德米尔铁路的《两封信》和托马斯·德·昆西的文章《英国邮车》,因为它们焦虑地思考了机械化流动如何破坏对地方的感知,并构成国家、历史、人口、经济地位和大众品味等抽象概念。正如迈克尔·弗里曼(Michael Freeman)所指出的,这种变化往往会塑造文化的概念,就像铁路的引入一样(18)。我发现华兹华斯和德昆西对这些变化表示焦虑,因为他们认为这些变化是中心观念转变的前兆。卡尔·马克思在其《Grundrise》一书中将19世纪革命性的交通和通信技术描述为“时间对空间的毁灭”。然而,考虑到空间的概念可以扩展到包括记忆、想象和个人身份等经验领域,马克思的主张似乎是关于距离的毁灭,而不是空间的毁灭——无论是实际的还是隐含的。华兹华斯对湖区景观的空间完整性和神圣性受到侵犯的焦虑似乎与这种距离的破坏有关,因为这种破坏会
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来源期刊
EXPLICATOR
EXPLICATOR LITERATURE-
CiteScore
0.10
自引率
0.00%
发文量
17
期刊介绍: Concentrating on works that are frequently anthologized and studied in college classrooms, The Explicator, with its yearly index of titles, is a must for college and university libraries and teachers of literature. Text-based criticism thrives in The Explicator. One of few in its class, the journal publishes concise notes on passages of prose and poetry. Each issue contains between 25 and 30 notes on works of literature, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman times to our own, from throughout the world. Students rely on The Explicator for insight into works they are studying.
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