By examining naturalist novels and silent films from 1895 to 1915, my dissertation projects backwards out of these representational solutions to identify a formal and philosophical problem: time as force. I argue that the early cinema approached the problem of time as an opportunity to demonstrate its representational capabilities as a new medium. In contrast, I suggest that naturalist novels and early narrative films registered a pervasive belief in temporal determinism on the level of narration and, as a result, frequently envisioned the passage of time as a limit to authorial freedom. Using two forms that obsessively posed and answered questions about temporal representation as a lens, I argue that conceptions of time as a force pervaded technological, aesthetic, and cultural discourses in the United States at the turn of the century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07282008-121704 |
| Date | 05 August 2008 |
| Creators | Fusco, Katherine |
| Contributors | Paul Young, Cecelia Tichi |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07282008-121704/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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