Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism

Paul Ardoin is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.S. E. Gontarski is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of 15 books, including Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1928-1989 and The Grove Press Reader, 1951-2001.Laci Mattison is Visiting Lecturer of English Literature at Florida State University, USA.

The tripartite structure adopted for the collection works extremely well, neatly separating discussions of key texts and terms from their analysis against, across and beyond the Modernist period. […] ‘Diving in at will’: might Ardoin’s description of the recklessly perceptive modernist artist serve just as well as a suggestion for how we ought to encounter Bergsonian thought in Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism? Perhaps. ‘The best way … to understand a concept like durée or élan vital, for instance, is to dive into its cross-textual development,’ Ardoin, Gontarski and Mattison insist at the outset. Such an approach proves fruitful, elucidating and building upon ideas of free will, artistic perception, comedy and memory. […] ‘Diving in at will’ may well be its recommended approach, but the volume still rewards those readers wishing only to wet their toes.

• Foreword, Suzanne Guerlac Abbreviations Contributors Introduction, Paul Ardoin, S. E. Gontarski, and Laci Mattison Part 1. Conceptualizing Bergson1. (Re)Reading Time and Free Will : (Re)Discovering Bergson for the Twenty-First Century, Mary Ann Gillies2. Bergson’s Matter and Memory : From Time to Space, David Addyman 3. Comedies of Errors: Bergson’s Laughter in Modernist Contexts, Jan Walsh Hokenson 4. Sub Specie Durationis, or the Free Necessity of Life’s Creativeness in Bergson’s Creative Evolution, David Scott 5. A Reading of Two Sources of Morality and Religion, or Bergsonian Wisdom, Emotion, and Integrity, Michael R. Kelly 6. The Inclination of Philosophy: The Creative Mind and the Articulation of a Bergsonian Method, Paul Atkinson Part 2. Bergson and Aesthetics7. Bergson, Vitalism, and Modernist Literature, Paul Douglass 8. Perception Sickness: Bergsonian Sensitivity and Modernist Paralysis, Paul Ardoin 9. “ Blast . . . Bergson? ” Wyndham Lewis ’ s “ Guilty Fire of Friction ”, Charlotte de Mille 10. Bergson and Proust: A Question of Influence, Pete A. Y. Gunter 11. Joyce’s Matter and Memory: Perception and Memory-Events in Finnegans Wake, Dustin Anderson 12. Minds Meeting: Bergson, Joyce, Nabokov, and the Aesthetics of the Subliminal, Leona Toker 13. Modernist Energeia: Henri Bergson and the Romantic Idea of Language, Sarah Posman 14. H.D.’s Intuitional Imagism: Memory, Desire, and the Image in Process, Laci Mattison 15. Bergson and the Comedy of Horrors, John Mullarkey 16. Time and Free Will: Bergson, Modernism, Superheroes, and Watchmen, Eric Berlatsky 17. The Joys of Atavism, Claire Colebrook Part 3. GlossaryIndex