Article ID: CBB001213321

Botanising Women: Transmission, Translation and European Exchange (2011)

unapi

George, Sam (Author)
Martin, Alison E. (Author)


Journal of Literature and Science
Volume: 4, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 1-11


Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Introduction to a special issue, “Women and Botany”
Language: English

The papers published in this special themed issue of the Journal of Literature and Science on women and botany are part of a project which developed from a panel at the 2009 British Society for Literature and Science conference. Our title, Botanising Women: Transmission, Translation and European Exchange, illustrates the project's overall themes: the circulation of European ideas (notably Linnaeanism and Rousseauism) by women, inside and outside the botanical text, the transmission of botanical knowledge, through an exchange of plants and specimens and through the familiar format of letters and dialogue), and the exchange of ideas around gender and natural science, both culturally and in terms of translation. As guest editors we think botany is deserving of a special issue. The interrelation between botany and literary production has been a swiftly developing area of scholarship over the past decade. Monographs by Molly Mahood (The Poet as Botanist, 2008), Sam George (Botany, Sexuality and Women's Writing, 1760-1830: From Modest Shoot to Forward Plant, 2007) and Amy M. King (Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel, 2003) demonstrate in their various ways how under-researched the relationship between literary writing and botany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been. Botanical texts for and by women have broad cross-disciplinary appeal (the visual arts, travel writing, education, history of science etc.) and illustrate the cross-fertilisation of literature and science in women's writing particularly well, whilst opening up crucial debates around gender, sexuality and culture. The botanical texts we have chosen have largely been ignored by historians of science because of their informal literary format and overlooked by literary scholars because of their scientific content. Botanising women favoured `familiar' genres of writing that were confessional, dialogic, conversational or epistolary in style. This continued right up to the end of the Victorian era, as is demonstrated by the work of Emily Lawless (1845-1914), whose diaries and journals combined botany with life-writing and reflection. Such textual strategies caused the female botanist to be sidelined as a mere populariser by some, but it is precisely this feminisation of botanical knowledge that exemplifies our main themes of sociability, transmission and exchange, inextricably tied, as it is in its published form, to sociability and scientific networks. The articles aim to bring these compelling, essentially hybrid texts, into prominence and assign them a proper place in the histories of science, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and women's writing. Botany would never again be quite so topical or fashionable and these texts serve to remind us of this, while allowing us to consider the reasons why women's botany in particular became so prominent and so controversial.

...More

Description Focuses on 18th and 19th centuries. Contents:


Includes Series Articles

Article Hagglund, Betty (2011) The Botanical Writings of Maria Graham. Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 44-58). unapi

Article Hansson, Heidi (2011) Emily Lawless and Botany as Foreign Science. Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 59-73). unapi

Article George, Sam (2011) Epistolary Exchange: the Familiar Letter and the Female Botanist, 1760--1820. Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 12-29). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001213321/

Similar Citations

Article Palmira Fontes da Costa; (2022)
Gender and botany in early nineteenth-century Portugal: The circle of the Marquise of Alorna (/isis/citation/CBB087814611/)

Book Page, Judith W; Smith, Elise Lawton; (2011)
Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora, 1780--1870 (/isis/citation/CBB001214713/)

Article Anna Maerker; Elena Serrano; Simon Werrett; (2022)
Enlightened female networks: gendered ways of producing knowledge (1720–1830) (/isis/citation/CBB578642078/)

Article Anscomb, Lisa; (2005)
“As far as a woman's reasoning can go”: Scientific Dialogue and Sexploitation (/isis/citation/CBB000670532/)

Article Alison E. Martin; (2016)
Outward Bound: Women Translators and Scientific Travel Writing, 1780–1800 (/isis/citation/CBB858206004/)

Article Ogawa, Mariko; Endo, Shōji; (2006)
The Language of Science: The Circulation of Knowledge in Translation (/isis/citation/CBB000771789/)

Article Jacob, Margaret C.; Sturkenboom, Dorothée; (2003)
A Women's Scientific Society in the West: The Late Eighteenth-Century Assimilation of Science (/isis/citation/CBB000340627/)

Article Gianquitto, Tina; (2013)
Botanical Smuts and Hermaphrodites: Lydia Becker, Darwin's Botany, and Education Reform (/isis/citation/CBB001320191/)

Book Wallwork, Jo; Salzman, Paul; (2011)
Early Modern Englishwomen Testing Ideas (/isis/citation/CBB001250683/)

Article Waring, Sophie; (2015)
Margaret Fountaine: A Lepidopterist Remembered (/isis/citation/CBB001422107/)

Article Gallavotti, Giovanni; (2013)
Aspects of Lagrange's Mechanics and their Legacy (/isis/citation/CBB001320790/)

Book Agustí Camós Cabeceran; (2021)
La Huella de Lamarck en España en el Siglo XIX (/isis/citation/CBB874294977/)

Authors & Contributors
Fontes da Costa, Palmira
Sagal, Anna Katerina
Waring, Sophie
Smith, Elise Lawton
Page, Judith W
Werrett, Simon
Concepts
Women in science
Science and gender
Botany
Translations
Diffusion of innovation; diffusion of knowledge; diffusion of technology
Transmission of ideas
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
Early modern
20th century
Places
Europe
Great Britain
Portugal
Japan
China
South Korea
Institutions
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Natuurkundig Genootschap der Dames
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment