Limit this search to....

Romantic Science: The Literary Forms of Natural History
Contributor(s): Heringman, Noah (Editor)
ISBN: 0791457028     ISBN-13: 9780791457023
Publisher: State University of New York Press
OUR PRICE:   $33.20  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: July 2003
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Annotation: Although "romantic science" may sound like a paradox, much of the romance surrounding modern science -- the mad scientist, the intuitive genius, the utopian transformation of nature -- originated in the Romantic period. Romantic Science traces the literary and cultural politics surrounding the formation of the modern scientific disciplines emerging from eighteenth-century natural history. Revealing how scientific concerns were literary concerns in the Romantic period, the contributors uncover the vital role that new discoveries in earth, plant, and animal sciences played in the period's literary culture. Furthermore, as they examine the social and literary ramifications of a particular branch or object of natural history, they historicize our present intellectual landscape by reimagining and redrawing the disciplinary boundaries between literature and science.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- History | Europe - Great Britain - General
- Science | History
Dewey: 820.936
LCCN: 2002042642
Series: SUNY Series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Physical Information: 0.55" H x 5.86" W x 9.14" (0.88 lbs) 281 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Although romantic science may sound like a paradox, much of the romance surrounding modern science--the mad scientist, the intuitive genius, the utopian transformation of nature--originated in the Romantic period. Romantic Science traces the literary and cultural politics surrounding the formation of the modern scientific disciplines emerging from eighteenth-century natural history. Revealing how scientific concerns were literary concerns in the Romantic period, the contributors uncover the vital role that new discoveries in earth, plant, and animal sciences played in the period's literary culture. As Thomas Pennant put it in 1772, Natural History is, at present, the favourite science over all Europe, and the progress which has been made in it will distinguish and characterise the eighteenth century in the annals of literature. As they examine the social and literary ramifications of a particular branch or object of natural history, the contributors to this volume historicize our present intellectual landscape by reimagining and redrawing the disciplinary boundaries between literature and science.

Contributors include Alan Bewell, Rachel Crawford, Noah Heringman, Theresa M. Kelley, Amy Mae King, Lydia H. Liu, Anne K. Mellor, Stuart Peterfreund, and Catherine E. Ross.