Matter as the New Wilderness: Cognitive Obstacles, Radium, and Radioactivity in British and American Popular Fiction from the 1910s

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, the radical paradigm shift in atomic phys- ics and chemistry attracted attention from non-scientific culture, and provided a new set of imagery in literary representation of matter, particularly in popular fiction. The article presents a number of texts whose themes and plots were rooted in a peculiar manner of writing, featuring a radical and consistent projection of emotions and desires onto literary representation of matter. The theoretical background has been derived from recent discus- sion of cultural materialism, and from Gaston Bachelard’s psychoanalysis of the scientific mind. The selection of literary texts covers popular novels and short stories published in Britain and the United States between 1880 and 1918. The conclusions present a some- what surprising link between the new developments in atomic theory, and the tradition of frontier settings in the American adventure romance.