Realism, ethics and secularism : essays on Victorian literature and science / George Levine.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levine, George, 1931- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

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

Literature and science.

Ethics--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Ethics.

Knowledge, Theory of, in literature.

Science in literature.

Realism in literature.

Secularism in literature.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--19th century.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 283 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Realism, Ethics & Secularism

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

George Levine is one of the world's leading scholars of Victorian literature and culture. This collection of his essays develops the key themes of his work: the intersection of nineteenth-century British literature, culture and science and the relation of knowledge and truth to ethics. The essays offer perspectives on George Eliot, Thackeray, the Positivists, and the Scientific Naturalists, and reassess the complex relationship between Ruskin and Darwin. In readings of Lawrence and Coetzee, Levine addresses Victorian and modern efforts to push beyond the limits of realist art by testing its aesthetic and epistemological limits in engagement with the self and the other. Some of Levine's most important contributions to the field are reprinted, in revised and updated form, alongside previously unpublished material. Together, these essays cohere into an exploration both of Victorian literature and culture and of ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic problems fundamental to our own times.

Contents:

Part I : the subject broached : otherness, epistemology, and ethics

George Eliot's hypothesis of reality

Part II : ethics without God, or, can "is" can become "ought"?

Is life worth living?

Ruskin and Darwin and the matter of matter

Scientific discourse as an alternative to faith

In defense of Positivism

Why science isn't literature : the importance of differences

Part III : literature, secularity, and the quest for otherness

Realism

Dickens, secularism, and agency

The heartbeat of the squirrel

Real toads in imaginary gardens, or vice versa.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

ISBN:

1-107-20051-2

1-281-90382-5

9786611903824

0-511-43790-0

0-511-48487-9

0-511-43645-9

0-511-43857-5

0-511-43565-7

0-511-43723-4

OCLC:

476202513