Gillian Beer

Darwin's Plots (eBook, PDF)

Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Gillian Beer's classic Darwin's Plots, one of the most influential works of literary criticism and cultural history of the last quarter century, is here reissued in an updated edition to coincide with the anniversary of Darwin's birth and of the publication of The Origin of Species. Its focus on how writers, including George Eliot, Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hardy, responded to Darwin's discoveries and to his innovations in scientific language continues to open up new approaches to Darwin's thought and to its effects in the culture of his contemporaries. This third edition includes an important new essay that investigates Darwin's concern with consciousness across all forms of organic life. It demonstrates how this fascination persisted throughout his career and affected his methods and discoveries. With an updated bibliography reflecting recent work in the field, this book will retain its place at the heart of Victorian studies.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. Mai 2009
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780511763427
• Artikelnr.: 38209815

Autorenporträt

Professor Dame Gillian Beer was President of Clare Hall, 1994-2001, and King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1994-2002. Her works include Darwin's Plots (1983; third edition, 2009), which related the form of Victorian novels to Darwinist thinking.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword George Levine
Preface to second edition
Introduction
Part I. Darwin's Language: 1. 'Pleasure like a tragedy': imagination and the material world
2. Fit and misfitting: anthropomorphism and the natural order
Part II. Darwin's Plots: 3. Analogy, metaphor and narrative in The Origin
4. Darwinian myths
5. George Eliot: Middlemarch
6. George Eliot: Daniel Deronda and the idea of a future life
7. Descent and sexual selection: women in narrative
8. Finding a scale for the human: plot and writing in Hardy's novels
9. Darwin and the consciousness of others
Select bibliography of primary works.

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Foreword George Levine
Preface to second edition
Introduction
Part I. Darwin's Language: 1. âPleasure like a tragedy': imagination and the material world
2. Fit and misfitting: anthropomorphism and the natural order
Part II. Darwin's Plots: 3. Analogy, metaphor and narrative in The Origin
4. Darwinian myths
5. George Eliot: Middlemarch
6. George Eliot: Daniel Deronda and the idea of a future life
7. Descent and sexual selection: women in narrative
8. Finding a scale for the human: plot and writing in Hardy's novels
9. Darwin and the consciousness of others
Select bibliography of primary works.

Rezensionen

'Gillian Beer's superb study [is] a work of criticism that takes its modest place among the other 'cloudy triumphs' of English genius.' Michael Neve, Sunday Times