Death Driven: A brief, living history of the novel as a form – Syllabus

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In 1902, Georges Méliès released the now seminal trick film A Trip to the Moon. The film, which was inspired by two of Jule Verne’s earlier novels, follows a group of astronomers who travel to the moon and encounter its subterranean inhabitants. Méliès’s film marked the first time a film was able to use technical innovation to create a fantastical spectacle of pure entertainment, that up until that point had been the novel’s domain. Later that same year, Verne, “the man who invented the future,” acknowledged that the innovations of film posed a threat to the novel; more imminently, he expressed a belief that the novel was already moribund because of the newfound ability to publish newspapers en masse. With inexpensive, detailed accounts of life locally and globally, what purpose would people have for reading novels anymore? In 1925, almost a century ago to date, José Ortega y Gasset reiterated Verne’s initial concern in The dehumanization of art and Ideas about the novel which sought,

Death Driven: A brief, living history of the novel as a form – Syllabus Death driven: A brief, living history of the novel as a form by Conor Truax 0. Preamble: Notes on the novel’s death drive In 1902, Georges Méliès released the now seminal trick film A Trip to the Moon . The film, which was inspired by two of Jule Verne’s earlier novels, follows a group of astronomers who travel to the moon and encounter its subterranean inhabitants. Méliès’s film marked the first time a film was able to use technical innovation to create a fantastical spectacle of pure entertainment, that up until th

Death Driven: A brief, living history of the novel as a form – Syllabus

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