The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

Science, Evolution, and Ecology
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-138-11040-3
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 363 g

At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self. The wide range of authors covered in Page's ambitious study permits him to explore an impressive array of topics that include the role of the Romantic era in the molding of scientific and cultural perspectives; the engagement of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley with questions raised by contemporary science; Mary Shelley's conflicted views on the unfolding prospects of modernity; and how Victorian writers like Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler, and W.H. Hudson responded to the implications of evolutionary theory. Page concludes with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, to demonstrate how evolutionary fantasies reached the pinnacle of synthesis between evolutionary science and the imagination at the close of the century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Page, Michael R.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents: Introduction: 'the banner of science': science and the 19th-century British literary imagination; 'Beautiful and sublime images of the operations of nature': Erasmus Darwin; 'Mirrors of the gigantic shadows of futurity': Wordsworth and Shelley; 'A new species': Mary Shelley's science fiction novels; 'A tangled bank': Darwinian science fictions; 'Dim outlines on a desolate beach': H.G. Wells; Conclusion: 'where do we go from here?'; Works cited; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Michael R. Page is a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research focuses on literature's encounter with science and technology in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.