Romantic science
Subtitle: the literary forms of natural history
By: Noah Heringman, editor.
Contributors: Heringman, Noah.
Series: SUNY series, studies in the long nineteenth century
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 281
Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Nature in literature.; Literature and science -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Natural history in literature.
Description: "Although "romantic science" may sound like a paradox, much of the romance surrounding modern science - the mad scientist, the intuitive genius, the utopian transformation of nature - originated in the Romantic period. Romantic Science traces the literary and cultural politics surrounding the formation of the modern scientific disciplines emerging from eighteenth-century natural history. Revealing how scientific concerns were literary concerns in the Romantic period, the contributors uncover the vital role that new discoveries in earth, plant, and animal sciences played in the period's literary culture.

As Thomas Pennant put it in 1772, "Natural History is, at present, the favourite science over all Europe, and the progress which has been made in it will distinguish and characterise the eighteenth century in the annals of literature." As they examine the social and literary ramifications of a particular branch or object of natural history, the contributors to this volume historicize our present intellectual landscape by reimagining and redrawing the disciplinary boundaries between literature and science."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.