QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:
Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Klimasmith, B. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Salvaging History: Modern Philosophies of Memory and Time in The Age of Innocence

University of Massachusetts, Boston

This essay reads Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence (1920) not as an escapist response to the First World War but, in its exploration of modern scientific and philosophical conceptions of time and memory as articulated by Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson, an exploration of the emotional trauma wrought by the war and a proposal for how the modern world might recover and move forward. Cannily manipulating time within the accessible form of the historical novel, Wharton makes readable a version of modern consciousness in which behavior and emotion, public time and private time, tradition and change coexist. For most readers, the novel's genre, style, setting, and author preclude it from being considered a modernist text; however, this essay argues that Wharton's subtle manipulation of historical detail along with her engagement with the philosophy of memory and the physics of time make The Age of Innocence her most successful literary experiment and position it as a major modern literary response to the First World War.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?