Article ID: CBB151128250

The Psychologization of Geological Catastrophe in Mary Shelley's The Last Man (2015)

unapi

In the late eighteenth century, the French geologist, Georges Cuvier, employed fossil studies to prove the extinction of certain species, attributing their annihilation to past, sudden changes on the surface of the globe. I argue that Mary Shelley’s third novel, The Last Man (1826), explores various contemporary geological ideas about what caused past species extinctions, ultimately privileging her theory of plague. To support this notion, Shelley adopts Cuvier’s hypothesis of an enervating earth, portraying anti-climatic natural disasters, while also radically shifting geological catastrophism into the psychological “world” of the individual.

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Review Fani Cettl (2017) Review of "The Psychologization of Geological Catastrophe in Mary Shelley's The Last Man". Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 81-82). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB151128250/

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Authors & Contributors
Page, Michael R.
Taylor, Jesse Oak
Friedman, Lester D.
Finn, Ed
Mueller, Eddy Von
Murphy, Olivia
Concepts
Science and literature
Science fiction
Science and culture
Frankenstein
Extinction (biology)
Romanticism
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
21st century
Early modern
20th century, early
Places
Great Britain
England
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