The Alternative Modernity of the Bicycle in British and French Literature, 1880–1920
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| Title: | The Alternative Modernity of the Bicycle in British and French Literature, 1880–1920 |
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| Description: | 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. |
| Authors: | Una Brogan |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | British literature--19th century, Bicycles in literature, British literature--20th century, French literature--20th century, French literature--19th century |
| Categories: | LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | 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. |
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| ISBN: | 9781474488600 9781474488624 9781474488631 |
