Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction - Hardcover

Levine, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674192850 ISBN 13: 9780674192850

Verlag: Harvard University Press, 1988

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Levine George

Über diesen Titel

Reseña del editor:

Darwin's theory thrust human life into time and nature and subjected it to naturalistic rather than spiritual or moral analysis. Insisting on gradual and regular-lawful-change, Darwinian thought nevertheless requires acknowledgment of chance and randomness for a full explanation of biological phenomena. George Levine shows how these conceptions affected nineteenth-century novelists-from Dickens and Trollope to Conrad-and draws illuminating contrasts with the pre-Darwinian novel and the perspective of natural theology. Levine demonstrates how even writers ostensibly uninterested in science absorbed and influenced its vision. A central chapter treats the almost aggressively unscientific Trollope as the most Darwinian of the novelists, who worked out a gradualist realism that is representative of the mainstream of Victorian fiction and strikingly consonant with key Darwinian ideas. Levine's boldly conceived analysis of such authors as Scott and Dickens demonstrates the pervasiveness and power of this revolution in thought and sheds new light on Victorian realism.

Biografía del autor:

George Levine is Kenneth Burke Professor of Literature and Director of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers University. He has written on science and the history of science as well as on literature.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Harvard University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0674192850
• ISBN 13: 9780674192850
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336