Scientific and Cultural Interpretations of Volcanoes, 1766–1901 analyzes nineteenth-century conceptions of volcanoes through interdisciplinary literature and science studies. The project considers how people in the nineteenth century used science, aesthetics, and other ways of knowing to understand volcanoes and their operations. In the mid-eighteenth century, volcanoes were seen as singular, unique features of the planet that lacked temporal and terrestrial reach. By the end of the nineteenth century, volcanoes were seen as networked, environmental phenomena that stretched through geological time and geographic space. Scientific and Cultural Interpretations of Volcanoes, 1766–1901 offers a new historical understanding of volcanoes and their environmental connections, using literature and science to show how perceptions of volcanic time and space changed over 135 years. The first chapter, using texts by Sir William Hamilton, Hester Piozzi, and Priscilla Wakefield, argues that in the late eighteenth century important aspects of volcanoes, like their impact upon human life and their existence through time, were beginning to be defined in texts ranging from the scientific to the educational. The second chapter focuses on works by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Lyell to demonstrate the ways that volcanoes were stripped of metaphysical or symbolic meaning as the nineteenth century progressed. The third chapter contrasts the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa with Constance Gordon-Cumming’s travels to Kīlauea. The chapter shows how even towards the end of the century, trying to connect human minds with the process of volcanic phenomenon was a substantial challenge, but that volcanoes like Kīlauea allowed for new conceptions of volcanic action. The last chapter, through a post-apocalyptic novel by M. P. Shiel, shows how volcanoes were finally beginning to be categorized as a primary agent within the environment, shaping all life including humanity. Ultimately, I argue that the change in thinking about volcanoes parallels today’s shift in thinking about global climate change. My work provides insight into how we imagine ecological catastrophes like volcanic eruptions or climate change in the past and present and what that means for their impact on people.
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Thesis
Higgins, John Robert;
(2011)
Fossil Poetry, the Birth of Geology, and the Romantic Imagination, 1790--1860
(/isis/citation/CBB001567320/)
Chapter
Maria Enrica D'Agostini;
(2003)
J.W. Goethe, Alexander e Wihelm von Humboldt in un foglio di laboratorio
(/isis/citation/CBB490594438/)
Book
Dean, Dennis R.;
(2007)
Romantic Landscapes: Geology and Its Cultural Influence in Britain, 1765--1835
(/isis/citation/CBB000774364/)
Book
Fabio D'Angelo;
(2022)
La scienza itinerante. Formazione delle competenze e impiego delle risorse minerario-metallurgiche tra il Regno di Napoli e l'Europa (secoli XVIII-XIX)
(/isis/citation/CBB161563605/)
Article
Luigina Vezzoli;
Claudia Principe;
(2020)
Monte Amiata volcano (Tuscany, Italy) in the history of volcanology, Part 1: its role in the debates on extinct volcanoes, sources of magma, and eruptive mechanisms (1733-1935)
(/isis/citation/CBB903002196/)
Book
Thüsen, Joachim von der;
(2008)
Schönheit und Schrecken der Vulkane: Zur Kulturgeschichte des Vulkanismus
(/isis/citation/CBB001220474/)
Essay Review
Taylor, Kenneth L.;
(2012)
Telliamed in Its Time
(/isis/citation/CBB001500134/)
Book
Stefanie Stockhorst;
Jürgen Overhoff;
Penelope J. Corfield;
(2021)
Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century: From Pests and Predators to Pets, Poems and Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB446524520/)
Chapter
Vermij, Rienk;
(2011)
The Light of Nature and the Allegorisation of Science on Dutch Frontispieces around 1700
(/isis/citation/CBB001201619/)
Thesis
Michael Verderame;
(2017)
Science, Politics, and Soul-Making: The Romantic Encounter with Climate Change
(/isis/citation/CBB568976028/)
Chapter
Ramakers, Bart;
(2011)
Staging Nature: Observation, Imagination and Experience in E.M. Post's Het land, in brieven (1788)
(/isis/citation/CBB001201623/)
Chapter
Elliott, Paul;
(2012)
Erasmus Darwin's Trees
(/isis/citation/CBB001421358/)
Book
Major, Judith K.;
(2013)
Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer: A Landscape Critic in the Gilded Age
(/isis/citation/CBB001422319/)
Book
Jeff Karnicky;
(2016)
Scarlet Experiment: Birds and Humans in America
(/isis/citation/CBB488937827/)
Article
McKechnie, Claire;
Alder, Emily;
(2012)
Introduction: Literature, Science, and the Natural World in the Long Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001213304/)
Book
Francesco Luzzini;
(2022)
Quando il mondo scalò il Sublime. Scienza e storia nel primo Memoriale dell'Hotel Nave d'Oro di Predazzo (1820-1875)
(/isis/citation/CBB828950191/)
Book
Federica Millefiorini;
(2020)
Creato e creatività letteraria. La prosa di Antonio Stoppani
(/isis/citation/CBB102450085/)
Book
Buckland, Adelene;
(2013)
Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320420/)
Article
Considine, John;
(2014)
John Jamieson, Franz Passow, and the Double Invention of Lexicography on Historical Principles
(/isis/citation/CBB001201303/)
Book
Federico Prina;
(2022)
Vulcani. Tra geografia e letteratura
(/isis/citation/CBB040204142/)
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