1st Edition
The Evolutionary Imagination in Late-Victorian Novels An Entangled Bank
By John Glendening
Copyright 2007
234 Pages
by
Routledge
234 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Dominated by Darwinism and the numerous guises it assumed, evolutionary theory was a source of opportunities and difficulties for late Victorian novelists. Texts produced by Wells, Hardy, Stoker, and Conrad are exemplary in reflecting and participating in these challenges. Not only do they contend with evolutionary complications, John Glendening argues, but the complexities and entanglements of... Read more
Contents: Prologue: Tierra del Fuego, 1832-33; Introduction; 'Green confusion': evolution and entanglement in Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau; The entangled heroine of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles; What ' "modernity" cannot kill': evolution and primitivism in Stoker's Dracula; Death and the jungle in Conrad's early fiction; Conclusion; Epilogue: Galapagos 1835 (2004); Works cited; Index.
Biography
John Glendening is Professor of English at the University of Montana, USA.
’Through close reading and careful contextualization, Glendening [...] persuasively delineates the impact of evolutionary anxieties on the fin-de-siècle British novel....Recommended.’ Choice ’... frequently eloquent and astute about Hardy's fictional assimiliation of scientific pursuits that attempt to reconstruct the trajectory of man's collective past... Glendening's book is a trenchant addition to research produced by such seminal commentators as Gillian Beer, Roger Ebbaston, Peter Morton, Roger Robinson and James Kasner.’ Hardy Society Journal ’Glendening's book makes a sterling contribution to our understanding of the cultural and literary implications of the development hypothesis. With its magisterial command of primary and secondary materials, its clearly articulated structure and the directness of its style, The Evolutionary Imagination offers a genuinely wide-ranging perspective on the 'entangled bank' and its literary forms. ... certainly demands to be read as a richly rewarding analysis of the fertile literary problematic inherent in the fin de siècle trope of the entangled bank.’ Review of English Studies
