Romantic Science: The Literary Forms of Natural History (Studies Long Nineteenth Cent) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791457028 ISBN 13: 9780791457023

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2003

Synopsis

Uncovers the vital role that new scientific discoveries played in Romantic literary culture.

Although "romantic science" may sound like a paradox, much of the romance surrounding modern science-the mad scientist, the intuitive genius, the utopian transformation of nature-originated in the Romantic period. Romantic Science traces the literary and cultural politics surrounding the formation of the modern scientific disciplines emerging from eighteenth-century natural history. Revealing how scientific concerns were literary concerns in the Romantic period, the contributors uncover the vital role that new discoveries in earth, plant, and animal sciences played in the period's literary culture. As Thomas Pennant put it in 1772, "Natural History is, at present, the favourite science over all Europe, and the progress which has been made in it will distinguish and characterise the eighteenth century in the annals of literature." As they examine the social and literary ramifications of a particular branch or object of natural history, the contributors to this volume historicize our present intellectual landscape by reimagining and redrawing the disciplinary boundaries between literature and science.

Contributors include Alan Bewell, Rachel Crawford, Noah Heringman, Theresa M. Kelley, Amy Mae King, Lydia H. Liu, Anne K. Mellor, Stuart Peterfreund, and Catherine E. Ross.

About this title

About the Author

Noah Heringman is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791457028
• ISBN 13: 9780791457023
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296
• Editor: Heringman Noah