The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension: Higher Spatial Thinking in the Fin de Siècle ISBN: 9780191816680 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Literary Studies (20th Century onwards) Literary Studies (19th Century);
The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension describes the development and proliferation of the idea of higher dimensional space in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. An idea from mathematics that was appropriated by occultist thought, it emerged in the fin de siecle as a staple of genre fiction and influenced a number of important Modernist writers and artists.
Providing a context for thinking of space in dimensional terms, the volume describes an active interplay between self-fashioning disciplines and a key moment in the popularisation of science. It offers new research into spiritualism and the Theosophical Society and studies a series of curious hybrid texts. Examining works by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft, and others, the volume explores how new theories of the possibilities of time and space influenced fiction writers of the period, and how literature shaped, and was in turn shaped by, the reconfiguration of imaginative space occasioned by the n-dimensional turn.
A timely study of the interplay between philosophy, literature, culture, and mathematics, it offers a rich resource for readers interested in nineteenth century literature, Modernist studies, science fiction, and gothic scholarship.
Mark Blacklock, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Birkbeck College, University of London
Mark Blacklock is a cultural historian and novelist. His critically acclaimed first novel I'm Jack was published by Granta in 2015. He lectures on Cultural Studies and English Literature at Birkbeck College and writes for the national press.
