242 pages

English

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Beautiful Chaos , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Gordon E. Slethaug

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242 pages

English

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Informations
Extrait

Description

Beautiful Chaos is the first book to examine contemporary American fiction through the lens of chaos theory. The book focuses on recent works of fiction by John Barth, Michael Crichton, Don DeLillo, Michael Dorris, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Carol Shields, and Robert Stone, all of whom incorporate aspects of chaos theory in one or more of their novels. They accomplish this through their disruption of conventional linear narrative forms and their use of strategic tropes of chaos and order, but also—and more significantly for an understanding of the interaction of science and fiction—through their self-conscious embrace of the current rhetoric of chaos theory.

Since the publication of James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science in 1987, chaos theory has been taken up by a wide variety of literary critics and other scholars of the arts. While considering the relationship between chaos theory and recent American fiction, Beautiful Chaos details basic assumptions about orderly and dynamic systems and the various manifestations of chaos theory in literature, including mimesis, metaphor, model, and metachaotics. It also explains particular features of orderly and dynamic systems, including entropy, bifurcation and turbulence, noise and information, scaling and fractals, iteration, and strange attractors.
Acknowledgments

1. Dynamic Fiction and the Field of Action: Mimesis, Metaphor, Model, and Metachaotics

2. Orderly Systems: Growth, Competition, and Transgression

3. Entropic Crisis, Blockage, Bifurcation, and Flow

4. Turbulence, Stochastic Processes, and Traffic

5. Energy, Noise, and Information

6. Juxtapositional Symmetry: Recursion, Scaling, and Fractals

7. Iteration

8. Strange Attractors

9. Synoptic Study: “The Coded Dots of Life”

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

USA

United States of America

Literary theory

Philosophy of science

États-Unis

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780791491737
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

CHAOS THEORY AND METACHAOTICS IN RECENT AMERICAN FICTION

Gordon E. Slethaug

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Beautiful Chaos

Chaos Theory and Metachaotics in Recent American Fiction

GORDON E. SLETHAUG

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever with-out written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, mag-netic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Kelli Williams Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Slethaug, Gordon Beautiful chaos : chaos theory and metachaotics in recent American fiction / Gordon E. Slethaug. p. cm.—(SUNY series in postmodern culture) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-7914-4741-3 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-7914-4742-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism.2. Chaotic behavior in systems in literature. I. Title. II. Series.

PS374.C4. S58 2000 813'.5409384—dc21

00-038766

I wish to dedicate Beautiful Chaos to three colleagues who have been great friends and have always given me good advice: Dr. Neil Hultin, Dr. Warren Ober, and Dr. James Van Evra.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

CONTENTS