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Darwin's bards : British and American poetry in the age of evolution / John Holmes.
LIBRA PR585.S33 H65 2009
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Holmes, John, 1973-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- English poetry--19th century--History and criticism.
- English poetry.
- American poetry--19th century--History and criticism.
- American poetry.
- English poetry--20th century--History and criticism.
- American poetry--20th century--History and criticism.
- Evolution (Biology) in literature.
- Natural selection.
- Physical Description:
- xiv, 288 pages ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
- Summary:
- Darwin's Bards is the first comprehensive study of how poets have responded to the ideas of Charles Darwin in over fifty years. John Holmes argues that poetry can have a profound impact on how we think and feel about the Darwinian condition. Is a Darwinian universe necessarily a godless one? What is our own place in the Darwinian universe, and our ecological role here on earth? How does our kinship with other animals affect how we see them and ourselves?
- Holmes explores the ways in which some of the most perceptive and powerful British and American poets of the last hundred-and-fifty years have grappled with these questions, from Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, through Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, to Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, Amy Clampitt and Edwin Morgan. Reading their poetry, we too can experience what it can mean to live in a Darwinian world.
- Contents:
- 1 Poetry in the Age of Darwin 1
- Science, poetry and literary criticism 1
- Whose Darwinism? 6
- The Darwinian tradition in modern poetry 22
- Poetry and Darwinism in practice: Three poems by Edwin Morgan 27
- 2 Poetry and the Non-Darwinian Revolution 37
- Non-Darwinian evolution in late Victorian poetry 37
- Pseudo-Darwinism and bad faith: A.C. Swinburne and Mathilde Blind 46
- Reading A Reading of Earth: George Merediths later poetry 54
- Doubting progress: Science and evolution in Tennyson's last poems 62
- 3 God 75
- Darwinism, Christianity and theology 75
- Happenstance or design? Two sonnets 80
- Natural theology: Robert Browning's Caliban upon Setebos 84
- God after Darwin: Three contemporary American poets and the Book of job 89
- 4 Death 102
- Darwinism, death and immortality 102
- In the Woods: George Meredith 107
- Death and dying: Robinson Jeffers 116
- Love and loss: Thomas Hardy 121
- 5 Humanity's Place in Nature 130
- The exact centre, or just another African ape? 130
- An idiot on a crumbling throne: The cosmic perspective 133
- Earth's catastrophe: The planetary perspective 139
- All we've got: The human perspective 148
- 6 Human and Other Animals 154
- More than kin and less than kind 154
- At the master-fulcrum of violence: Hawks and falcons 159
- A diminished thing: Songbirds and birdsong 164
- Someone else additional to him: Deer in modern poetry 177
- 7 Love and Sex 185
- A Darwinian sex 185
- A Darwinian sex comedy: Constance Naden's Evolutional Erotics 189
- The Darwinian love sonnet: George Meredith and Edna St Vincent Millary 197
- Metamorphosis: Thom Gunn and the human animal 212
- 8 On Balance 226
- For better or for worse 226
- The just proportion of good to ill: Weighing up evolution 230
- Disenchantment and re-enchantment: The power of paradox 235
- Darwin's pagans: Meredith's Ode and Tennyson's Lucretius 245.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780748639403
- 0748639403
- OCLC:
- 426118971
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