Article ID: CBB001022441

Losing the Plot: The Geological Anti-Narrative (2010)

unapi

Buckland, Adelene (Author)


19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Volume: 11
Pages: Approx. 6,640 words


Publication Date: 2010
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “Science, Literature, and the Darwin Legacy”. http://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/index.php/19/article/view/578 (Accessed March 21, 2011).
Language: English

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.

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Article White, Paul (2010) Science, Literature, and the Darwin Legacy. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001022441/

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Authors & Contributors
Thomas Sharpe
Erick Villanueva-Villaseñor
Sponsel, Alistair William
Rudwick, Martin J.S.
Orr, Mary
Oldroyd, David Roger
Concepts
Geology
Earth sciences
Science and art
Science and literature
Science and culture
Scientific communities; interprofessional relations
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
Qing dynasty (China, 1644-1912)
20th century
Places
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean
England
Catalonia (Spain)
Italy
Institutions
Geological Society of London
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