Darwin's Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution

ISBN-13: 9780748692071 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 304 str.

John Holmes

Opis

This is a comprehensive study of Darwin's Legacy for religion, ecology and the arts. In Darwin's Bards John Holmes argues that poetry can have a profound impact on how we think and feel about the human condition in a Darwinian world. Including over 50 complete poems and substantial extracts from several more, Holmes shows how poets from Tennyson and Browning, through Hardy and Frost, to Ted Hughes, Pattiann Rogers and Edwin Morgan have responded to the discovery of evolution. Written for scientists, philosophers and ecologists, as well as poets, critics and students of literature, Darwin's Bards is a timely intervention into the heated debates over Darwin's legacy for religion, ecology and the arts. The book will appeal to readers for its discussion of the existential implications of Darwinism, for its close readings of poetry, and for the reprinted poems themselves.

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Acknowledgements Preface 1. Poetry in the Age of Darwin Science, poetry and literary criticism Whose ‘Darwinism’? The Darwinian tradition in modern poetry Poetry and Darwinism in practice: Three poems by Edwin Morgan 2. Poetry and the ‘Non-Darwinian Revolution’ Non-Darwinian evolution in late Victorian poetry Pseudo-Darwinism and bad faith: A. C., Swinburne and Mathilde Blind Reading A Reading of Earth: George Meredith’s later poetry Doubting progress: Science and evolution in Tennyson’s last poems 3. God: Darwinism, Christianity and theology Happenstance or design? Two sonnets Natural theology: Robert Browning’s ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ God after Darwin: Three contemporary American poets and the Book of Job 4. Death: Darwinism, death and immortality ‘In the Woods;: George Meredith Death and dying: Robinson Jeffers Love and loss: Thomas Hardy 5. Humanity’s Place in Nature ‘The exact centre’, or just another African ape? ‘An idiot on a crumbling throne’: The cosmic perspective ‘Earths catastrophe’: The planetary perspective ‘All we’ve got’: The human perspective 6. Humans and Other Animals More than kin and less than kind At ‘the master-fulcrum of violence’: Hawks and falcons ‘A diminished thing’: Songbirds and birdsong ‘Someone else additional to him’: Deer in modern poetry 7. Love and Sex Darwinism and sex A Darwinian sex comedy: Constance Haden’s ‘Evolutional Erotics’ The Darwinian love sonnet: George Meredith and Edna St Vincent Millay Metamorphosis: Thom Gunn and the human animal 8. On Balance For better or for worse ‘The just proportion of good to ill’: Weighing up evolution Disenchantment and re-enchantment: The power of paradox Darwin’s pagans: Meredith’s ‘Ode3’ and Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’ Conclusion Bibliography Index Poems in Darwin’s Bards: A. R. Ammons: ‘Questionable Procedures’ Philip Appleman: ‘How Evolution Came to Indiana’, ‘Waldorf-Astoria Euphoria’ D. M. Black: ‘Kew Gardens’ Mathilde Blind: The Ascent of Man [extracts] Robert Browning: ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ [extracts] William Canton: ‘The Latter Law’ [sonnet from a sequence] Stephen Crane: ‘A man said to the universe’ Richard Eberhart: ‘Sea-Hawk’ Robert Frost: ‘Design’, ‘The Oven Bird’, ‘The Most of It’, ‘Our Hold on the Planet’ Thom Gunn: ‘Adultery’, ‘The Garden of the Gods’ Thomas Hardy: ‘Hap’, ‘Your Last Drive’, ‘Rain on a Grave’, ‘At Castle Boterel’, ‘An August Midnight’, ‘The Darkling Thrush’, ‘Shelley’s Skylark’, ‘The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House’, ‘To Outer Nature’, ‘On a Fine Morning’ Robinson Jeffers: ‘Vulture’, Cawdor [extract], ‘Rock and Hawk’ George Meredith: ‘The Woods of Westermain’ [opening lyric], ‘In the Woods’ [8 lyrics out of a sequence of 9], ‘The Lark Ascending’ [extracts], Modern Love [3 sonnets from a sequence], ‘Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn’ [extracts] Edna St Vincent Millay: ‘The Fawn’, ‘I shall forget you presently, my dear’, Fatal Interview [2 sonnets from a sequence] Edwin Morgan: ‘Eohippus’, ‘The Archaeopteryx’s Song’, ‘Trilobites’ Lewis Morris: ‘Ode of Creation’ [extract] Constance Naden: ‘Natural Selection’ Agnes Mary Robinson: ‘Darwinism’ Pattiann Rogers: ‘Against the Ethereal’, ‘The Possible Suffering of a God During Creation’, ‘Geocentric’ Neil Rollinson: ‘My Father Shaving Charles Darwin’ John Addington Symonds: ‘An Old Gordian Knot’ [sonnet from a sequence] Alfred Tennyson: ‘Flower in the Crannied Wall’, ‘By an Evolutionist’, ‘The Dawn’, ‘The Making of Man’, ‘Frater Ave atque Vale’, ‘Lucretius’ [extracts]