The Double-Edged Sword: The Technological Sublime in American Novels between 199 and 1940

The technological sublime -a simultaneous awe and fear of technology- has been an important element of American culture for the past two centuries. It is a construct that can be useful in understanding the often conflicted and ambivalent reactions of exaltation and anxiety associated with technological progress in the United States. The early twentieth century saw the culmination of the technological sublime in America: the loss of the by and large innocently onesided enthusiasm and technological republicanism of the nineteenth century to the fragmented, often paranoiac, and largely pessimistic vision of technology that has become typical in the literature produced after World War II.