The Alternative Modernity of the Bicycle in British and French Literature, 1880-1920

von Una Brogan

292 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

This book engages with the long-overlooked bicycle as a crucial literary and cultural object. In a selection of turn-of-the-century fiction, travel writing and non-fiction, cycling is revealed to be a favoured literary device, allowing writers to structure their narratives in new ways or depict a fresh sensory and aesthetic experience. Moreover, this study reveals that from its earliest days, the bicycle played a compelling counter-cultural role, proposing an alternative modernity that directly challenged bourgeois, patriarchal, capitalist society. From blurring gender and class divisions, to offering a more empowering interaction with the machine and allowing an embodied and social experience of space, the bicycle pointed a human-powered route to progress amidst increasingly mechanised visions of the future.

• Themen: Biographie, Literatur und Literaturwissenschaft Geschichte und Kritik Literaturwissenschaft, allgemein 1900 bis 2000
• ISBN: 9781474488600
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 25.03.2022
• Größe: 234 x 156 mm
• Verlag: Edinburgh University Press