Attanucci, Timothy J. (Author)
This dissertation investigates "geological" literature in the 19th century, and aims to describe a poetics of the earth sciences. Focusing on the work of Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868), whose literary experiments translate and transform scientific knowledge, the dissertation argues that the modern scientific approaches to the "history of the earth," primarily meteorology, geology, and biology, present complex and often contradictory narratives. Meteorological contingency, geological "deep time," and proto-ecological environmental thought call into question religious cosmogonies and modern anthropocentrism alike. In Stifter's stories and novels, scientific worlds without humans confront the anthropological conventions of an ordered literary tradition in surprising and productive ways, which may not resolve into a satisfying grand narrative of earth and humankind, but do point to an objective, impersonal tendency in modern literature that is often overlooked. At the same time, as a genre of writing, literary texts demonstrate a capacity for self-reflection that sheds light on the poetic structures of other forms of knowledge, both theoretical and practical. Situating Stifter within a larger discursive context that features authors such as Goethe, A. von Humboldt, C. G. Carus, Lyell, Viollet-le-Duc, Darwin and E. Haeckel, this study addresses epistemological, aesthetic and social issues that are central to 19th-century culture, from the concept of the event and the statistical collection, to the problem of time in the representation of landscape and the role of geology as a model for historical reconstructions, and finally, the problem of life, its genealogy and its milieu.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/04(E), Oct 2013. Proquest Document ID: 1238001620.
Book
Lyle, Louise;
McCallam, David;
(2008)
Histoires de la Terre: Earth Sciences and French Culture, 1740--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB001230862/)
Chapter
Callataÿ, Godefroid de;
(2008)
World Cycles and Geological Changes According to the Brethren
(/isis/citation/CBB001022542/)
Book
Gorst, Martin;
(2001)
Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time
(/isis/citation/CBB000101760/)
Thesis
Johnson, Nancy Newberry;
(2001)
Theories of the Earth in “A Dictionary of the English Language” (1755): Samuel Johnson's engagement with early science
(/isis/citation/CBB001562612/)
Article
Hewitt, Rachel;
(2007)
“Eyes to the Blind”: Telescopes, Theodolites and Failing Vision in William Wordsworth's Landscape Poetry
(/isis/citation/CBB001213338/)
Book
Holland, Jocelyn;
(2009)
German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter
(/isis/citation/CBB001221163/)
Thesis
Goldstein, Amanda Jo;
(2011)
“Sweet Science”: Romantic Materialism and the New Sciences of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001567306/)
Article
Gegotek, J.;
(2008)
The Basic Theoretical Assumptions of Charles Lyell's “Principles of Geology” (1830--1833)
(/isis/citation/CBB000931674/)
Book
Newcomb, Sally;
(2009)
The World in a Crucible: Laboratory Practice and Geological Theory at the Beginning of Geology
(/isis/citation/CBB001021017/)
Book
A. M. Celâl Şengör;
(2020)
Revising the Revisions: James Hutton’s Reputation among Geologists in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB747677573/)
Chapter
Frängsmyr, Tore;
(2007)
Between the Deluge and the Ice Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000775028/)
Article
O'Connor, Ralph;
(2007)
Young-Earth Creationists in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain? Towards a Reassessment of “Scriptural Geology”
(/isis/citation/CBB000773217/)
Article
Buch, Dietrich von;
(2000)
Leopold von Buch: Charakterzüge eines Werner-Schülers
(/isis/citation/CBB000340441/)
Article
Greg A. Brick;
(2022)
The far shoals of Neptunism: William H. Keating and the St. Peter Sandstone in the American Midwest
(/isis/citation/CBB784589624/)
Book
Engelhardt, Wolf von;
(2003)
Goethe im Gespräch mit der Erde: Landschaft, Gesteine, Mineralien und Erdgeschichte in seinem Leben und Werk
(/isis/citation/CBB000740904/)
Article
Ksiazkiewicz, Allison;
(2015)
A Philosophical Pursuit: Natural Models and the Practical Arts in Establishing the Structure of the Earth
(/isis/citation/CBB001553618/)
Thesis
Zimmerman, Virginia Lee-Alice;
(2001)
The Grating Roar of Science: Victorian Revisions of Time
(/isis/citation/CBB001562372/)
Article
Jordan D. II Marché;
(2019)
“Giant Birds of Old”: An 1837 poem by James Dwight Dana (?) on the supposed makers of the Connecticut Valley's fossil trackways
(/isis/citation/CBB796867178/)
Article
Sommer, Marianne;
(2003)
The Romantic Cave? The Scientific and Poetic Quests for Subterranean Spaces in Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB000470492/)
Book
Buckland, Adelene;
(2013)
Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320420/)
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