Moral authority, men of science, and the Victorian novel / Anne DeWitt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

DeWitt, Anne, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 84.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 84

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Literature and science--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and science.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Moral conditions in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 273 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Moral Authority, Men of Science, & the Victorian Novel

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Nineteenth-century men of science aligned scientific practice with moral excellence as part of an endeavor to secure cultural authority for their discipline. Anne DeWitt examines how novelists from Elizabeth Gaskell to H. G. Wells responded to this alignment. Revising the widespread assumption that Victorian science and literature were part of one culture, she argues that the professionalization of science prompted novelists to deny that science offered widely accessible moral benefits. Instead, they represented the narrow aspirations of the professional as morally detrimental while they asserted that moral concerns were the novel's own domain of professional expertise. This book draws on works of natural theology, popular lectures, and debates from the pages of periodicals to delineate changes in the status of science and to show how both familiar and neglected works of Victorian fiction sought to redefine the relationship between science and the novel.

Contents:

The religion of science from natural theology to scientific naturalism

Moral uses, narrative effects: natural history in the novels of George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell

"The actual sky is a horror": Thomas Hardy and the problems of scientific thinking

"The moral influence of those cruelties": the vivisection debate, antivivisection fiction, and the status of Victorian science

Science, aestheticism, and the literary career of H.G. Wells.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 24 Feb 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-24177-4

1-139-89165-0

1-316-60094-7

1-107-25128-1

1-107-24796-9

1-139-56638-5

1-107-24879-5

1-107-25045-5

1-107-24962-7

OCLC:

854975220