|
Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 19th century
|
Buy Now
Science and Omniscience in Nineteenth Century Literature (Paperback, New)
Loot Price: R1,165
Discovery Miles 11 650
You Save: R305
(21%)
|
|
|
Science and Omniscience in Nineteenth Century Literature (Paperback, New)
Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days
|
This book takes as its starting point Pierre-Simon Laplace's
much-cited dream in 1812 of 'a vast intelligence' which can
'embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies
of the universe and those of the lightest atom' and for which the
future and the past are equally calculable. Laplace sets out THE
echt-Enlightenment ideal of scientific omniscience and the classic
statement of a deterministic universe. The author investigates some
of the ways in which Laplacian and, indeed, Newtonian models of
observation and the universe are at once assimilated and
complicated by Romantic and Victorian writers such as Carlyle,
Burke, Abbott, Poe and Wordsworth. In particular, it aims to
retrace some of the ways in which LaplacianNewtonian models of
scientific 'intelligence' come to inform nineteenth-century
writers' views of themselves and their own modes of observation.
The author also explains how some of these literary reimaginings
look forward to more modern conceptions of science in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, such as Chaos Theory and Einsteinian
Cosmology. Oddly enough, contemporary science would seem to realise
Carlyle's vision of a 'Natural-Supernaturalism', fusing Laplace's
mechanical vision with Romanticism. This book covers a vast array
of topics, including Philosophy, Wagner's music and music in
general, Jungian analysis, and ends with the 'omniscient' narrator
in Charles Dickens's 'The Old Curiosity Shop', as an example of
what came to be the dominant mode of narration in later Victorian
fiction.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
You might also like..
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
