The Meteorological Device: Literary Modernism, the Daily Weather Forecast and the Productions of Anxiety

Sheils, Barry

Abstract

The focus of this article is the world's first mathematical weather forecast by Lewis Fry Richardson, published in 1922. In a counter-archival and anti-historical move, Richardson's work argues for the "disaggregation" of the future from the past. The paradox which results from this disaggregation, namely that the future must be framed as unprecedented in order to be subject to prediction, is viewed as a disciplinary bind which afflicts literary modernism and meteorology equally. Through a reading of James Joyce's Ulysses alongside the meteorological data for Dublin on June 16, 1904, this article considers the interaction between the future and the archive as a problem of literary writing.

Citation

Sheils, B. (2024). The Meteorological Device: Literary Modernism, the Daily Weather Forecast and the Productions of Anxiety. Modernism/modernity, 31(1), 23-44. https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.2024.a935443

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 30, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Aug 29, 2024
• Publication Date: Jan 31, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jan 28, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 30, 2024
• Journal: Modernism/modernity
• Print ISSN: 1080-6601
• Electronic ISSN: 1071-6068
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 31
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 23-44
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.2024.a935443
• Keywords: Meteorology; literary weather; ‘high’ modernism; Joyce; Woolf; Mallarmé; Vilhelm Bjerknes; Lewis-Fry Richardson; the anthropocene; everydayness; anxiety
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1215886
• Publisher URL: https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/sheils-meteorological-device