Table Of ContentThe Discourse of Modernism
BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Toward Dramatic Illusion: Theatrical Technique and
Meaning from Hardy to "Horace"
Tragedy and Truth: Studies in the Development of a Renaissance and
Neoclassical Discourse
The Discourse
of Modernism
J.
TIMOTHY REISS
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.
Copyright © 1982 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book,
or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission
in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University
Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850, or visit
our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.
First published 1982 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1985
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reiss, Timothy J., 1942–
The discourse of modernism.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1.Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Epistemics. I. Title.
BD161.R46 190 81-15212 AACR2
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-1464-0 (cloth) — ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-9336-2 (pbk.)
The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
For Jean
(and all the waiting)
and in memory of my mother,
19og-1981
Contents
Preface 9
A Note on Punctuation 17
1 On Method, Discursive Logics, and Epistemology 21
2 Questions of Medieval Discursive Practice 55
3 From the Middle Ages to the (W)Hole of Utopia 108
4 Kepler, His Dream, and the Analysis and Pattern
of Thought 140
5 Campanella and Bacon: Concerning Structures of Mind 168
6 The Masculine Birth of Time 198
7 Cyrano and the Experimental Discourse 226
8 The Myth of Sun and Moon 261
9 The Difficulty of Writing 277
10 Crusoe Rights His Story 294
11 Gulliver's Critique of Euclid 328
12 Emergence, Consolidation, and Dominance of a Discourse 351
Bibliography 387
Index 4°3
I was young then and did not know how difficult it is for Western
man to understand the dream-heavy classical soul. They are so far
apart. The god of superlative shape has been replaced by the god of
superlative force and between the two conceptions there is all space.
-Eric Ambler, Journey into Fear
Expressing their thoughts in words of which they are not the mas
ters, enclosing them in verbal forms whose historical dimensions
they are unaware of, men believe that their speech is their servant
and do not realize that they are submitting themselves to its de
mands.
-Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses
It may always be asserted that determinant paths must exist between
the slave system characteristic of Greek society and the miracle of
geometry, that the appearance of the applied sciences from the neo
classical era on must be conditioned in various ways by the mercan
tile economy of modern Europe, and so on. It can be asserted. It is
correct to do so. That does not change the fact that the outline of
these paths, the detailed description of such conditions is non
existent. The matter has perhaps been logically demonstrated, it has
not been shown.
-Michel Serres, "Les sciences"
Preface
The present work examines aspects of the emergence and
development, of the consolidation and growth to dominance, of
modern Western discourse-or, as I will be calling it, the "analytico
referential." The book sets up a model to describe how one domi
nant discourse gives way to another. In particular, it shows the cre
ation and development of the various elements fundamental to
analytico-referential discourse, and it demonstrates at the same time
the necessary occultation of other elements whose visible presence in
discourse would subvert its overt aims (though such occultations are
not "intentional"). The basic claim is that the kind of epistemic de
velopment seen in the early seventeenth century, preceded by at
least a century of crisis and followed by a half century of consolida
tion, is being echoed in our own time and is leading to a similarly
significant and complete conceptual change. I also claim that the
change of our own time can be understood only in the light of the
earlier one, and that it is urgent to understand just what kind of
arguments and assertions were necessary to the establishment of the
"discursive class" now being placed in question. The principal corpus
I use in establishing these claims is composed of science fictions and
utopias drawn from the critical historical moment of the European
Renaissance and Neoclassicism. These brief assertions require some
immediate explanation and clarification.
The term "discourse" refers to the way in which the material em
bodying sign processes is organized. Discourse can thus be character
ized as the visible and describable praxis of what is called "thinking."
For thinking is nothing but the organization of signs as an ongoing
process. Signs themselves may be 'defined' provisionally as the non
discrete 'elements' composing the process toward meaningfulness
that itself is both defined by and defining of what signs are. So
9
