The Cylinder. Helmut Müller-Sievers

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      The Cylinder

      FLASHPOINTS

      The series solicits books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, distinguished both by their historical grounding and their theoretical and conceptual strength. We seek studies that engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, Flash-Points is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Available online at http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress.

      Series Editors

      Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA)

      Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor

      Edward Dimendberg (Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator

      Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor

      Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz)

      Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz)

      Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz)

      1. On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant, by Dina Al-Kassim

      2. Moses and Multiculturalism, by Barbara Johnson, with a foreword by Barbara Rietveld

      3. The Cosmic Time of Empire: Modern Britain and World Literature, by Adam Barrows

      4. Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity, by Michelle Clayton

      5. Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt, by Shaden M. Tageldin

      6. Wings for Our Courage: Gender, Erudition, and Republican Thought, by Stephanie H. Jed

      7. The Cultural Return, by Susan Hegeman

      8. Reading Delhi: The Politics of Language and Literary Production in India, by Rashmi Sadana

      9. The Cylinder: Kinematics of the Nineteenth Century, by Helmut Müller-Sievers

      The Cylinder

       Kinematics of the Nineteenth Century

      Helmut Müller-Sievers

      University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

      University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 2012 by The Regents of the University of California

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Müller-Sievers, Helmut.

       The cylinder : kinematics of the nineteenth century / Helmut Müller-Sievers.

       p. cm.

       Includes bibliographical references and index.

       ISBN 978-0-520-27077-0 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

       1. Literature, Modern—19th century—Themes, motives. 2. Machinery in literature. 3. Mechanics in literature. 4. Science in popular culture.

      5. Cylinders. I. Title.

       PN56.M2M85 2012

       809’.915 23

      2011033138

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on 50-pound Enterprise, a 30% post-consumer-waste, recycled, deinked fiber that is processed chlorine-free. It is acid-free and meets all ANSI/NISO (z 39.48) requirements.

      For J and s,

      . . . ardorem cupiens dissimulare meum.

      Contents

       Acknowledgments

       PART ONE: THE PREHISTORY AND METAPHYSICS OF THE CYLINDER

       1. Introduction

       2. The Rise of Kinematics

       3. The Valuation of Motions

       PART TWO: CYLINDERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

       4. The Cylinder as Motor

       5. The Cylinder as Tool

       6. Kinematics of Narration I: Dickens and the Motion of Serialization

       7. The Cylinder as Enclosure

       8. Kinematics of Narration II: Balzac and the Cylindrical Shape of the Plot

       9. Gears and Screws

       10. Kinematics of Narration III: Henry James and the Turn of the Screw

       Epilogue

       Notes

       Works Cited

       Index

      Acknowledgments

      This book originated as a presentation in the fabled colloquium of Hans-Joerg Rheinberger’s Abteilung II at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in 2003. It was revived for a fellowship at the Institut für Kulturforschung in Vienna in 2006, where the director, Hans Belting, was a champion of the project and Ed Dimendberg first proposed to include it in the FlashPoints series. Most of the research was completed during a fellowship at the Getty Research Center 2007–8 with the help of its magnificent library staff. Correspondence, and finally a meeting in March 2009, with Francis Moon, the spiritus rector of KMODDL, the kinematics research group at Cornell, and the best expert of Franz Reuleaux’s work, pushed the project toward completion. A Kayden Grant from the