The place of fiction in the time of science
Subtitle: a disciplinary history of American writing
By: John Limon.
Series: Cambridge studies in American literature and culture
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1990
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
Subjects: American fiction -- History and criticism; Literature and science -- United States; Science in literature; United States -- Intellectual life
Description: In this major new book John Limon examines the various ways American authors have written in an age increasingly dominated by science. He focuses in particular on Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne--three highly articulate and alarmed witnesses to the great crisis in modern intellectual history, the professionalization of science. It was, Limon argues, especially difficult for American writers to face this crisis because, since America had been born in an age of expanding scientific consciousness and thus no appeal could be made to traditional, pre-scientific values.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-209).