Using a cognitive approach to literature, this book uncovers representations of self-consciousness in selected modern British novels, exposing it as complicating character development. Miller provides new readings of works by Conrad, Joyce, and D.H. Lawrence to demonstrate the emergence of a self who feels split from the world.
"Building on recent work suggesting how a focus on issues of affect, embodied cognition, and consciousness can generate new insights into the history of the novel, while also illuminating the nature and functions of narrative more generally, Self-consciousness in Modern British Fiction sketches out an innovative, well-grounded, and impressively cross-disciplinary approach to the staging of self-consciousness in foundational twentieth-century texts." - David Herman, Ohio State University
"Miller brilliantly investigates a defining concern of modernism in this analysis of works by Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, and Lessing. Free of obfuscation, this lucid work introduces the issues confronted by psychologists, philosophers, and novelists in defining and depicting self-consciousness. Miller's unobtrusive citation of theorists fully illuminates his subject." - CHOICE
"Miller brilliantly investigates a defining concern of modernism in this analysis of works by Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, and Lessing. Free of obfuscation, this lucid work introduces the issues confronted by psychologists, philosophers, and novelists in defining and depicting self-consciousness. Miller's unobtrusive citation of theorists fully illuminates his subject." - CHOICE