Losing the Plot: the Geological Anti-Narrative

19

Adelene Buckland¹ 

[1] Cambridge Victorian Studies Group and University of East Anglia;

关键词: Geology;    Charles Lyell;    Walter Scott;    Lord Byron;    realism;    Charles Kingsley;    science;    narrative;   

DOI  :  10.16995/ntn.578

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Geology has often been treated by literary critics as the producer narratives of earth history which were appropriated or resisted by novelists and poets. This paper will problematise this tradition by considering a widespread problematisation of plot as a mode of rational enquiry in the nineteenth century, and which underpinned much literary and geological discourse. Rooting itself in elite, fashionable literary culture, geology often resisted plot as a means of unravelling and describing earth history. Briefly considering the reading and the writings of geologists including Adam Sedgwick, William Buckland and Charles Lyell, this essay demonstrates that geology is a much different case in 'science and literature' than the evolutionary sciences explored by Gillian Beer and George Levine.

【 授权许可】

Unknown