Henchman, Anna Alexandra (Author)
"Astronomy and the Problem of Perception in British Literature 1830-1910" investigates the ways in which four Victorian writers apply their knowledge of the astronomy of the day to their own practice of creating rapid and disorienting shifts in perspective. For each, the night sky becomes a graphic example of two types of knowledge: daily sensory perception and conceptual understanding. Each epistemological mode is necessary and valid, yet in astronomy they present absolutely contradictory models of the world: the senses reveal a fixed dome of stars circling the earth, while conceptual understanding describes an infinite interstellar universe with no single center. For these writers, astronomy becomes an important resource for thinking about the way in which the mind negotiates these two ways of looking at the world. The dissertation centers on the literary works of Thomas De Quincey, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, and draws extensively from the texts on astronomy they studied: essays and treatises by William and John Herschel, William Whewell (Tennyson's tutor at Cambridge), Mary Somerville, John Pringle Nichol, R. A. Proctor, Herbert Spencer, Norman Lockyer and others. Each of the authors I treat read widely in astronomy, befriended contemporary astronomers, and visited university observatories; Tennyson also had a two-inch telescope at his home. And yet, to date, few scholars have remarked on the frequency with which references to astronomy appear in their literary works. No book-length project has examined the role of astronomy in nineteenth-century British literature, and no literary critics of any period have focused on astronomy's unique relationship to sensory perception. In the field of history of science, by contrast, the last twenty years have seen exciting work on the epistemological problems faced by nineteenth-century astronomers. My dissertation bridges this disciplinary divide to show the striking connections between the preoccupations of Victorian writers and those of the astronomers of their day.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/05 (2004): 1794. UMI pub. no. 3131862.
Book
Henchman, Anna;
(2014)
The Starry Sky Within: Astronomy and the Reach of the Mind in Victorian Literature
Chapter
Rowlinson, Matthew;
(2013)
History, Materiality and Type in Tennyson's “In Memoriam”
Thesis
McCabe, Elizabeth Caitlin;
(2013)
How the Past Remains: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and the Victorian Anthropological Doctrine of Survivals
Thesis
Heather Laura Brink-Roby;
(2015)
Typical People in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
Thesis
Gerstel, Jennifer Elisabeth;
(2002)
Sexual Selection and Mate Choice in Darwin, Eliot, Gaskell, and Hardy
Thesis
Elizabeth Badolato;
(2018)
Identity and Morality in a Finite-Infinite World: Redefining Infinity in Nineteenth Century Novels
Article
Henchman, Anna;
(2008)
Hardy's Stargazers and the Astronomy of Other Minds
Chapter
Stott, Rebecca;
(2013)
“Tennyson's Drift”: Evolution in “The Princess”
Book
Purton, Valerie;
(2013)
Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science
Thesis
Shearer, Emily Carroll;
(2014)
“Our Little Systems Have Their Day”: Tennyson's Poetic Treatment of Science
Article
Buckland, Adelene;
(2008)
Thomas Hardy, Provincial Geology and the Material Imagination
Article
Sorum, Eve;
(2009)
“The Place on the Map”: Geography and Meter in Hardy's Elegies
Article
Sara Lyons;
(2020)
Thomas Hardy and the Value of Brains
Book
Murphy, Patricia;
(2006)
In Science's Shadow: Literary Constructions of Late Victorian Women
Thesis
Coccaro, Adam;
(2010)
Evolution and Secular Teleology in the Progressive Epics of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mathilde Blind, and Thomas Hardy
Book
Gossin, Pamela;
(2007)
Thomas Hardy's Novel Universe: Astronomy, Cosmology, and Gender in the Post-Darwinian World
Article
Richardson, Angelique;
(2010)
Darwin and Reductionisms: Victorian, Neo-Darwinian and Postgenomic Biologies
Article
Alexis A. Ferguson;
(2024)
On knowing nature's syntax: Preliminary cisness, victorian physiology and George Eliot
Article
Helen Small;
(2020)
Artificial Intelligence: George Eliot, Ernst Kapp, and the Projections of Character
Book
Buckland, Adelene;
(2013)
Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology
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