Modern Luck
Narratives of fortune in the long twentieth century
Robert S. C. Gordon
Robert S. C. Gordon teaches in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge.
Preface
Part I
1 Something old, something new
2 Word trees and etymologies
PART II
3 Lucky numbers
4 Lucky places, lucky lines
5 The luckiest man
6 Moral luck and the survivor
7 Luck and the low life
8 Early style and child’s play
Afterword
References
Index
'Gordon’s blazing connections – between film and literature, the US and Europe, moods of optimism and dark historical realities – expose how truly reliant we are on luck in negotiating modern life in all its scales. This wonderful study wanders far from narrow disciplinary moorings to show the kinds of big thinking that the best cultural criticism can still do.'
Christina Lupton, Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick‘Robert S. C. Gordon’s Modern Luck is an impressive achievement: highly readable and engrossing, while at the same time deeply learned and dazzling in scope. Ranging over Casablanca to Back to the Future, Primo Levi to Philip K. Dick, Gordon takes readers through a variety of modern luck stories to show how figurations of luck are woven into the foundations of Western modernity. How lucky we are to have this book!’ Steven Belletto, Lafayette College
Format: Open Access PDF
186 Pages
Copyright: © 2023
ISBN: 9781800083592
Publication: January 17, 2023
Series: Comparative Literature and Culture
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