Wordsworth and the Geologists

ISBN-13: 9780521472593 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 284 str.

John Wyatt (West Sussex Institute of Higher Education)

Opis

Examination of the relationship between science and literary history is providing valuable new insights for scholars across a range of disciplines. In this text John Wyatt explores the unexpectedly close relationship between a major Romantic poet and a group of scientists in the formative years of a new discipline, geology. Wordsworth's later poems display extensive knowledge of geology and a preoccupation with philosophical issues concerned with the developing science of geology. Letters and diaries of leading geologists of the time reveal that they knew, and discussed their subject with, Wordsworth. Wyatt's study challenges the simplistic version of two cultures, the Romantic-literary against the scientific-materialistic, and aims to remind us of the variety of interrelating discourses current between 1807 (the year of the foundation of the Geological Society of London) and 1850 (the year of Wordsworth's death).

Recenzje

'… an absorbing and important book.' Stephen Gill, Romanticism

Spis treści

1. Introduction; 2. Wordsworth's geology: references and allusions; 3. 'Pronounce their benediction: speak of them as powers': the wider context of geological information; 4. Trinity men; 5. Order, clarity, distinctness; 6. 'The universality of nature's kingdom'?; 7. Duration and decay: the abyss of time; 8. Geology: the poetic discipline; 9. Geologists and humanity; 10. Conclusion.