Table Of ContentLiterary Modernism, Bioscience,
and Community in Early 20th
Century Britain
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Literary Modernism, Bioscience,
and Community in Early 20th
Century Britain
Craig A. Gordon
LITERARYMODERNISM, BIOSCIENCE, ANDCOMMUNITYINEARLY20TH
CENTURYBRITAIN
©Craig A. Gordon, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-3049-7754-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embod-
ied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-53759-4 ISBN 978-0-230-60418-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230604186
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
Part 1 Germ Cultures: D. H. Lawrence and the
Vital Question of the Tubercular Body
1 Where “Life Joins Hands with Death”:
Lawrence, the Sanatorium, and the Bare
Life of the Tubercular Body 23
2 Unraveling Lawrence’s Vital Web of
Dynamic Consciousness: Incorporating the
Work of Community or Assembling a Multitude? 81
Part 2 Atoms Upon the Mind: Virginia Woolf and
the Nervous Body at the Limit of Community
3 Organizing the Nervous Body, Regulating the
Self: The Psychological Production of National
Community in Mrs. Dallowayand The Waves 129
4 Breaking Habits, Affecting the Neuropsychological
Body: Toward the “Unsubstantial Territory” of
Disorganized Community 161
Appendix 207
Notes 211
Works Cited 223
Index 231
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Acknowledgments
My most sincere gratitude is due to both Kim Michasiw and Thomas Loebel,
whose consistently acute commentary and substantial patience fundamentally
shaped this work at an early stage. The project has also benefited enormously
from the insights of Lauren Gillingham, Jennifer Henderson, and Julie
Murray, who have offered me the benefit of both general dialogue and very
specific and detailed readings of my work. It equally has been a privilege, and
a source of inspiration, that they have so generously shared their work with
me and have provided sustaining friendship when I needed it most.
I also want to thank Keith Denny, Chris Douglas, Rob Hemmings, Lori
Kiefer, Phil Kiff, Peter Sinnema, Lisa Sloniowski, and Janet Wesselius for their
intellectual comradeship and friendship. They each deserve more specific
thanks than I am able to render here, and I can only hope that they will allow
me to attend to that debt in other ways and at other times. In having shared
with me their humor, intelligence, and energy, not to mention countless meals
and drinks, they have made life much more than merely livable and have
demonstrated to me, in innumerable ways, the value of the communities in
which I am fortunate to participate. Most of all, I would like to thank Alison
Lee. Thank you for your insight, intelligence, support, and patience. Thank
you for talking and listening. And thank you for making life fun.
Finally, it would be impossible to adequately acknowledge the debt I owe
to my parents, Elaine and Murray. Through their interest, curiosity, encour-
agement, sympathy, friendship, confidence, and periodic anxiety, they have
allowed me to trust my abilities, affirmed my ambitions, and reminded me
of the much broader perspective within which those ambitions are most pro-
ductively contemplated. Without their love and unflinching support, this
book would have been utterly impossible.
My initial preparations and the early writing of this manuscript were sup-
ported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, and the final stages of the work were supported by a
grant from the College of Arts at the University of Guelph. My work also
viii • Acknowledgments
owes a debt to the expertise and assistance of the staff at the British Library,
and the Wellcome Library, London, England. Parts of Chapters 3 and 4 were
previously published in “Breaking Habits, Building Communities: Virginia
Woolf and the Neuroscientific Body,” which appeared in issue 7, volume 1,
of Modernism/Modernity in 2000. They are reprinted here with the permis-
sion of Johns Hopkins University Press. The cover image appears courtesy of
the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
List of Abbreviations
CE Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays, 4 vols., ed. Leonard Woolf
(London: Hogarth, 1966–67).
F D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and
Fantasia of the Unconscious(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004).
MD Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992).
MM Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter
(New York: The Modern Library, 1955).
PS D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent (Quetzalcoatl), ed. L. D.
Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
PT[1910] David C. Muthu, Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Sanatorium
Treatment: A Record of Ten Years’ Observation and Work in
Open-Air Sanatoria(London: Baillière, 1910).
PT[1922] David C. Muthu, Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Its Etiology and
Treatment: A Record of Twenty-two Years’ Observation and Work
in Open-Air Sanatoria(London: Ballière, 1922).
RDP D. H. Lawrence, Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and
Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
S Donald O. Stewart, Sanatorium: A Novel(London: Chatto and
Windus, 1930).
W Virginia Woolf, The Waves (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992).
