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Book ID: CBB001202295

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

DeWitt, Anne (Author)

Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9781107036178

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

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Science and literature Science and culture Professions and professionalization Moral philosophy Natural theology Public demonstration Lectures 19th century England Gaskell, Elizabeth Wells, Herbert George

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

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http://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001202295/

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