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The Resource The Vital Science : Biology and the Literary Imagination,1860-1900

The Vital Science : Biology and the Literary Imagination,1860-1900

Creator
Summary
In this title, first published in 1984, Peter Morton argues that in late Victorian Britain a group of novelists and essayists quite consciously sought and found ideas in post-Darwinian biology that were susceptible to imaginative transformation. The period between 1860 and 1900 was a time of great confusion in biology; the natural selection hypothesis was in retreat before its acute critics, and no extension of evolutionary theory to human affairs was too bizarre to attract its quota of enthusiasts. Writers capitalised on this prevailing uncertainty and used it to their own artistic or pole
Language
eng
Work
Publication
Extent
1 online resource (272 pages)
Contents
  • Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Original Title Page; Original Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Definitions and Perspectives; Darwin's Literary Impact: The Dominant View; Final Definitions and Limitations; 1 Darwinism on the Deathbed, 1870-1900: The Failings of Natural Selection; Darwinism in Decay, 1870-1900; Anti-Darwinian Thought Concluded; 2 Victorian Biology and Victorian Letters: An Overview; Biology and Letters: Some Specific Linkages; 3 Better, Wiser, and More Beautiful Beings: The Cheerful Doctrine of Evolutionism
  • Evolutionism as Credo: Spencer, Reade and DrummondW. H. Hudson and A Crystal Age; The Cost of Evolutionary Perfection; 4 Laying the Ghost of the Brute: The Fear of Degeneration; The Victorians' Parochial Future; The Darwinists and Degeneration; Is Degeneration Really Perfection?; Degeneration and the Utopia; The Biological Vision of H.G. Wells; The Time Machine: Social or Biological Allegory?; The Time Machine and the Garden Metaphor; Wells's Controlled 'Inductive Future'; 5 Remember, Beethoven's Father Was a Drunkard: The Dubious Appeal of Eugenics; Late-Victorian Eugenics: An Overview
  • Literature and Galtonian EugenicsReformist Eugenics: Wallace and Grant Allen; Eugenics and Prevailing Theories of Inheritance; 6 Nemesis without Her Mask: Heredity before Mendel; Butler on Heredity; Butlerism and Mainstream Biology; Weismann and the Germ Plasm; 7 This Body Is an Omnibus: The Motif of Heredity in The Way of All Flesh and Tess of the d'Urbervilles; Butler's Roles as Biological Theorist and Novelist Compared; The Way of All Flesh as a Lamarckian Novel of Inheritance; Butler and Heredity Summarised; Tess and the Darwinian Motif; Hardy, Tess and August Weismann; Conclusion
Isbn
9781138799240
Instance
Label
The Vital Science : Biology and the Literary Imagination,1860-1900
Title
The Vital Science
Title remainder
Biology and the Literary Imagination,1860-1900
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
In this title, first published in 1984, Peter Morton argues that in late Victorian Britain a group of novelists and essayists quite consciously sought and found ideas in post-Darwinian biology that were susceptible to imaginative transformation. The period between 1860 and 1900 was a time of great confusion in biology; the natural selection hypothesis was in retreat before its acute critics, and no extension of evolutionary theory to human affairs was too bizarre to attract its quota of enthusiasts. Writers capitalised on this prevailing uncertainty and used it to their own artistic or pole
Member of
Cataloging source
EBLCP
Dewey number
  • 820.9356
  • 820/.9/356
Index
index present
LC call number
PR468.S34 M67 2014
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
  • dictionaries
  • bibliography
Series statement
Routledge Revivals
Label
The Vital Science : Biology and the Literary Imagination,1860-1900
Publication
Antecedent source
unknown
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
http://library.link/vocab/branchCode
  • net
Carrier category
online resource
Carrier category code
cr
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Color
multicolored
Content category
text
Content type code
txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
  • Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Original Title Page; Original Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Definitions and Perspectives; Darwin's Literary Impact: The Dominant View; Final Definitions and Limitations; 1 Darwinism on the Deathbed, 1870-1900: The Failings of Natural Selection; Darwinism in Decay, 1870-1900; Anti-Darwinian Thought Concluded; 2 Victorian Biology and Victorian Letters: An Overview; Biology and Letters: Some Specific Linkages; 3 Better, Wiser, and More Beautiful Beings: The Cheerful Doctrine of Evolutionism
  • Evolutionism as Credo: Spencer, Reade and DrummondW. H. Hudson and A Crystal Age; The Cost of Evolutionary Perfection; 4 Laying the Ghost of the Brute: The Fear of Degeneration; The Victorians' Parochial Future; The Darwinists and Degeneration; Is Degeneration Really Perfection?; Degeneration and the Utopia; The Biological Vision of H.G. Wells; The Time Machine: Social or Biological Allegory?; The Time Machine and the Garden Metaphor; Wells's Controlled 'Inductive Future'; 5 Remember, Beethoven's Father Was a Drunkard: The Dubious Appeal of Eugenics; Late-Victorian Eugenics: An Overview
  • Literature and Galtonian EugenicsReformist Eugenics: Wallace and Grant Allen; Eugenics and Prevailing Theories of Inheritance; 6 Nemesis without Her Mask: Heredity before Mendel; Butler on Heredity; Butlerism and Mainstream Biology; Weismann and the Germ Plasm; 7 This Body Is an Omnibus: The Motif of Heredity in The Way of All Flesh and Tess of the d'Urbervilles; Butler's Roles as Biological Theorist and Novelist Compared; The Way of All Flesh as a Lamarckian Novel of Inheritance; Butler and Heredity Summarised; Tess and the Darwinian Motif; Hardy, Tess and August Weismann; Conclusion
Control code
ocn886110810
Dimensions
unknown
Extent
1 online resource (272 pages)
File format
unknown
Form of item
online
Isbn
9781138799240
Level of compression
unknown
Media category
computer
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
c
http://library.link/vocab/ext/overdrive/overdriveId
634440
Quality assurance targets
not applicable
http://library.link/vocab/recordID
.b3464099x
Reformatting quality
unknown
Sound
unknown sound
Specific material designation
remote
System control number
  • (OCoLC)886110810
  • ebl1315756137
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    • Deakin University Library - Geelong Waurn Ponds CampusBorrow it
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