Article ID: CBB001211491

“The Poet of Science”: How Scientists Read Their Tennyson (2012)

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Holmes, John (Author)


Victorian Studies
Volume: 54, no. 4
Issue: 4
Pages: 655-678

Tennyson's responses to science have been thoroughly documented and discussed, but how did scientists respond to his poetry? Through examining in detail the work of three scientists who wrote at length about Tennyson---the astronomer Norman Lockyer, the physicist Oliver Lodge, and the American geologist William North Rice---it is possible to see how Tennyson went from being respected by contemporary scientists to being feted as the Poet of Science itself after his death. As a materialist, a spiritualist, and a Darwinian Methodist respectively, Lockyer, Lodge, and Rice had very different conceptions of how science worked and what it implied about the universe, yet each looked to Tennyson and his poetry to confirm and extend his own judgements and values.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001211491/

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Authors & Contributors
Baldwin, Melinda Clare
Beer, Gillian
Buckland, Adelene
Geric, Michelle
Gold, Barri J.
Hecht, David K.
Journals
Victorian Literature and Culture
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
Journal of the History of Biology
Public Understanding of Science
Victorian Studies
Publishers
Harvard University
Princeton University
University of Virginia
Anthem Press
Oxford University Press
University of Pittsburgh Press
Concepts
Science and literature
Poetry and poetics
Public understanding of science
Communication of scientific ideas
Popularization
Evolution
People
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord
Darwin, Charles Robert
Dickens, Charles
Eliot, George
Hardy, Thomas
Lyell, Charles
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
21st century
Places
Great Britain
Shanghai (China)
England
Institutions
Royal Society of London
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