Disorder, Affect, and Modernist Literature: Empathy After Entropy (Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism)

By: Matthew Phillips

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Synopsis: Modernist literature is defined by entropic characteristics. Its common themes include fragmentation, uncertainty, distrust, and misunderstanding. Alongside these themes, however, exists a desire to rebuild, to distill elements of past constructs into something that can provide stability in the chaotic present. Historically, modernist studies has focused on the former, without ample attention given to how entropic circumstances alter human emotion and affect. This book offers a new way of conceptualizing the modernist experience of alienation, disorder, and system deterioration as not merely negative, but productive in facilitating new structures of feeling and social adhesion. It pushes extant literary evaluations of entropy into a new realm by interrogating the human cost of entropic circumstances, and shows that we can use the process of entropy as a metaphorical lens through which to further understand the human connections and shared experiences reflected in modernist literature.