Uncommon Contexts: Encounters between Science and Literature, 1800-1914

by Ben Marsden (Editor), Hazel Hutchinson (Editor), Ralph O'Connor (Editor)

Overview

Britain in the long nineteenth century developed an increasing interest in science of all kinds. Whilst poets and novelists took inspiration from technical and scientific innovations, those directly engaged in these new disciplines relied on literary techniques to communicate their discoveries to a wider audience. The essays in this collection uncover this symbiotic relationship between literature and science, at the same time bridging the disciplinary gulf between the history of science and literary studies. Specific case studies include the engineering language used by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the role of physiology in the development of the sensation novel and how mass communication made people lonely.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822981879
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	10/15/2013
Series:	Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	9 MB

Table of Contents

Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements List of Contributors List of Figures Introduction 1. The Experimental Novel and the Literature of Physiology 2. An Active Nature: Robert Hunt and the Genres of Science Writing 3. Hyena-Hunting and Byron-Bashing in the Old North: William Buckland, Geological Verse and the Radical Threat 4. Re-reading Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Engineering Literature in the Early Nineteenth Century 5. Genre and Geometry: Victorian Mathematics and the Study of Literature and Science 6. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Social Vision: The Natural Histories of Mary Barton 7. ‘I Have in Mind a Study of a Scotch Seaman’: Witnessing Power in Joseph Conrad’s Early Literature of the Sea 8. ‘The Telegraph has Other Work to Do’: Reading and Consciousness in Henry James’s In the Cage Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

The contributions collectively explore and analyze a wide range of manifestations of the mutual engagement of literature and science during the longer nineteenth century.

Metascience

The essays here—indispensable examples of how to think about the genres of science communication—therefore have a significance that goes beyond the long nineteenth century . . . deserves to be widely read, and not just by students of nineteenth-century science and literature.

Annals of Science

A methodologically innovative and hugely interesting contribution to the rich seam of historicist Literature and Science studies . . . a valuable addition to Pickering & Chatto's 'Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century' series.

Isis

"The essays here—indispensable examples of how to think about the genres of science communication—therefore have a significance that goes beyond the long nineteenth century . . . deserves to be widely read, and not just by students of nineteenth-century science and literature."
—Annals of Science


"A methodologically innovative and hugely interesting contribution to the rich seam of historicist Literature and Science studies . . . a valuable addition to Pickering & Chatto's 'Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century' series."
—Isis


"The contributions collectively explore and analyze a wide range of manifestations of the mutual engagement of literature and science during the longer nineteenth century."
—Metascience

From the Publisher