Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel

ISBN-13: 9781107036178 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 290 str.

Anne DeWitt

Opis

Anne DeWitt examines how Victorian novelists challenged the claims of men of science to align scientific practice with moral excellence.

Recenzje

'… an interdisciplinary and ambitious study that delivers a collection of chapters covering such scientific topics as astronomy, medicine, scientific naturalism and vivisection. … Every chapter exhibits an array of fascinating primary evidence that demonstrates her own commitment to investigating the 'surface' as to the opposed hidden meaning of Victorian texts. … In doing so, the study presents a compelling, persuasive and confident study that offers sharp and intelligent readings of the nineteenth-century novel and its relationship to experimental science. … insightful and provocative. Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel proposes an important assembly of questions and provides some robust and intriguing answers of its own. Ann Loveridge, British Society for Literature and Science Reviews (www.bsls.ac.uk)

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. The religion of science from natural theology to scientific naturalism; 2. Moral uses, narrative effects: natural history in the novels of George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell; 3. 'The actual sky is a horror': Thomas Hardy and the problems of scientific thinking; 4. 'The moral influence of those cruelties': the vivisection debate, antivivisection fiction, and the status of Victorian science; 5. Science, aestheticism, and the literary career of H. G. Wells; Epilogue.