As I Lay Dying in the Machine Age

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-94
Keyword(s):  
Machine Age ◽  
As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying in the Machine Age

boundary 2 ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Machine Age ◽  
As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying in the Machine Age

Tekstualia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (44) ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
John T. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
New South ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Socioeconomic Stratum ◽  
As I Lay Dying ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
The Aesthetic

The following essay provides an analysis of the dialectical relationship between the aesthetic form of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and its „sedimented” social context. With its highly modernist and avant-garde qualities, As I Lay Dying stands out as one of Faulkner’s aesthetically most ambitious works. However, the author proposes, relying chiefl y on Adorno’s conceptual framework, a multifarious reappraisal in which the unconventional formal layer of Faulkner’s work manages to dialectically establish a textual independence while simultaneously uncovering the disturbing socioeconomic stratum that not only foregrounds the progressive shift of the New South but also provides a contextual base for As I Lay Dying.

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

Frontiers of Visibility

Transfers ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Torma
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Popular Images ◽  
Cinematic Technology

This article deals with the history of underwater film and the role that increased mobility plays in the exploration of nature. Drawing on research on the exploration of the ocean, it analyzes the production of popular images of the sea. The entry of humans into the depths of the oceans in the twentieth century did not revitalize myths of mermaids but rather retold oceanic myths in a modern fashion. Three stages stand out in this evolution of diving mobility. In the 1920s and 1930s, scenes of divers walking under water were the dominant motif. From the 1940s to the 1960s, use of autonomous diving equipment led to a modern incarnation of the “mermen“ myth. From the 1950s to the 1970s, cinematic technology was able to create visions of entire oceanic ecosystems. Underwater films contributed to the period of machine-age exploration in a very particular way: they made virtual voyages of the ocean possible and thus helped to shape the current understanding of the oceans as part of Planet Earth.

Toward Jerusalem: A journey of the eternal now (A Sermon)

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-107
Author(s):  
Richard Francis Wilson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The United States ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
As I Lay Dying ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Martin Luther King

This article is a theological-ethical Lenten sermon that attempts to discern the transcendent themes in the narrative of Luke 9-19 with an especial focus upon “setting the face toward Jerusalem” and the subsequent weeping over Jerusalem. The sermon moves from a passage from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying through a series of hermeneutical turns that rely upon insights from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Will Campbell, Augustine, and Paul Tillich with the hope of illuminating what setting of the face on Jerusalem might mean. Tillich’s “eternal now” theme elaborates Augustine’s insight that memory and time reduce the present as, to paraphrase the Saint, that all we have is a present: a present remembered, a present experienced, and a present anticipated. The Gospel is a timeless message applicable to every moment in time and history. The sermon seeks to connect with recent events in the United States and the world that focus upon challenges to the ideals of social justice and political tyranny.

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