Colonies, Cults and Evolution: Literature, Science and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Writing

by David Amigoni

Overview

The concept of culture, now such an important term within both the arts and the sciences, is a legacy of the nineteenth century. By closely analyzing writings by evolutionary scientists such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace, and Herbert Spencer, alongside those of literary figures including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Arnold, Butler, and Gosse, David Amigoni shows how the modern concept of 'culture' developed out of the interdisciplinary interactions between literature, philosophy, anthropology, colonialism, and, in particular, Darwin's theories of evolution. He goes on to explore the relationship between literature and evolutionary science by arguing that culture was seen less as a singular idea or concept, and more as a field of debate and conflict. This fascinating book includes much material on the history of evolutionary thought and its cultural impact, and will be of interest to scholars of intellectual and scientific history as well as of literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521174053
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/17/2011
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #59
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David Amigoni is Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: literature, science and the hothouse of culture; 1. 'Symbolical of more important things': writing science, religion and colonialism in Coleridge's 'culture'; 2. 'Our origin, what matters it?': Wordsworth's excursive portmanteau of culture; 3. Charles Darwin's entanglements with stray colonists: cultivation and the species question; 4. 'In one another's being mingle': biology and the dissemination of 'culture' after 1859; 5. Samuel Butler's symbolic offensives: colonies and mechanical devices in the margins of evolutionary writing; 6. Edmund Gosse's cultural evolution: sympathetic magic, imitation, and contagious literature; Conclusion: culture's field, culture's vital garment; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

"David Amigoni’s Colonies, Cults and Evolution: Literature, Science and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Writing is clearly written for academic specialists used to the language of contemporary literary and cultural theory, as it makes a significant contribution to the study of the relations between literature and science."
-George Levine,Rutgers University

From the Publisher