Book ID: CBB001202295

Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel (2013)

unapi

DeWitt, Anne (Author)


Cambridge University Press


Publication Date: 2013
Physical Details: ix + 273 pp.; bibl.; index
Language: English

Nineteenth-century men of science aligned scientific practice with moral excellence as part of an endeavor to secure cultural authority for their discipline. Anne DeWitt examines how novelists from Elizabeth Gaskell to H. G. Wells responded to this alignment. Revising the widespread assumption that Victorian science and literature were part of one culture, she argues that the professionalization of science prompted novelists to deny that science offered widely accessible moral benefits. Instead, they represented the narrow aspirations of the professional as morally detrimental while they asserted that moral concerns were the novel's own domain of professional expertise. This book draws on works of natural theology, popular lectures, and debates from the pages of periodicals to delineate changes in the status of science and to show how both familiar and neglected works of Victorian fiction sought to redefine the relationship between science and the novel.

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Reviewed By

Review Dawson, Gowan (2014) Review of "Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 735-737). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001202295/

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Authors & Contributors
Page, Michael R.
Lara Pauline Karpenko
Carlo Paghetti
Shalyn Rae Claggett
Kaitlin Southerly
Thorsen, Live Emma
Concepts
Science and literature
Science and culture
Professions and professionalization
Science fiction
Popular culture
Lectures
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
Modern
Places
Great Britain
England
United States
United Kingdom
London (England)
Europe
Institutions
Lunar Society of Birmingham (England)
University of Pennsylvania
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