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Article ID: CBB001213307

“Wherein Does Fitness Lie?” Darwinian Fitness and Presence in D. H. Lawrence (2012)

Journal of Literature and Science
Volume: 5, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 38-54
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special section, “Literature, Science, and the Natural World in the Long Nineteenth Century”

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There are numerous studies on the influence of evolution in Lawrence's works,1 and as many on Lawrence's reappraisal of time.2 Yet few consider these together. Anne Fernihough posits that linear evolutionary time eroded presence and was therefore to be subverted by Lawrence: For Lawrence, the linear version of time upon which Darwinian theory rests can never capture `presence,' since it is based on the method in which presence is continually deferred. It posits itself [. . .] on absence rather than presence (177). This idea is particularly useful in understanding the conflict between fitness and presence: a Darwinian notion of fitness is at odds with presence because it inserts the life of an organism into a linear conception of time for which the present has in itself no value, since it is only considered in its relationship to the future (will the creature or the characteristic survive?). Presence, in this context, refers to an object's material and historical existence, what Lawrence believes all art should aim to express. Presence amounts to the existence of matter (Lawrence, Phoenix 568) as opposed to the abstracted reality (Phoenix 569) of things as we usually perceive them through our logical minds

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Article McKechnie, Claire; Alder, Emily (2012) Introduction: Literature, Science, and the Natural World in the Long Nineteenth Century. Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 1-4). unapi

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