The Poetry of Victorian Scientists: Style, Science and Nonsense (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Series Number 83) - Hardcover

Brown, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107023378 ISBN 13: 9781107023376

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

A surprising number of Victorian scientists wrote poetry. Many came to science as children through such games as the spinning-top, soap-bubbles and mathematical puzzles, and this playfulness carried through to both their professional work and writing of lyrical and satirical verse. This is the first study of an oddly neglected body of work that offers a unique record of the nature and cultures of Victorian science. Such figures as the physicist James Clerk Maxwell toy with ideas of nonsense, as through their poetry they strive to delineate the boundaries of the new professional science and discover the nature of scientific creativity. Also considering Edward Lear, Daniel Brown finds the Victorian renaissances in research science and nonsense literature to be curiously interrelated. Whereas science and literature studies have mostly focused upon canonical literary figures, this original and important book conversely explores the uses literature was put to by eminent Victorian scientists.

About this title

Book Description

Victorian science and literature studies have long dwelt upon the responses of canonical literary figures to geology and evolutionary biology, whilst conversely ignoring verse written by scientists. The Poetry of Victorian Scientists, the first study of this subject, redresses the balance by focusing mainly upon poetry by physicists and mathematicians.

About the Author

Daniel Brown is Professor of English at the University of Southampton.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1107023378
• ISBN 13: 9781107023376
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 330