Divine in the Commonplace - Reverent Natural History and the Novel in Britain

Explores how natural theology features in both early Victorian natural histories and English provincial realist novels of the same period.

List of contents

Introduction: natural history, the theology of nature, and the novel; 1. Reverent natural history, the sketch, and the novel: modes of English realism in White, Mitford, and Austen; 2. Early Victorian natural history: reverent empiricism and the aesthetic of the commonplace; 3. The formal realism of reverent natural history: tidepools, aquaria and the seashore natural histories of P. H. Gosse and G. H. Lewes; 4. Reverence at the seashore: seashore natural history, Charles Kingsley's Two Years Ago (1855), and Margaret Gatty's Parables from Nature (1857); 5. Seeing the divine in the commonplace: George Eliot's paranaturalist realism, 1856-1859; 6. Elizabeth Gaskell's everyday: Reverent form and natural theology in Sylvia's Lovers (1863) and Wives and Daughters (1866); Epilogue: Barsetshire via Selborne: Anthony Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867).

About the author

Amy M. King is Associate Professor of English at St John's University, New York. She is the author of Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel (2003)

Summary

Elegantly and persuasively argues that natural theology was an important presence, not only in the natural histories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also in the novels of the same period. Will appeal to students and scholars of nineteenth-century literature and historians of science.

Product details

• Authors: Amy M. King, Amy M. (St John's University King, Amy M. (St John''s University King, King Amy M.
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.09.2019
• EAN: 9781108492959
• ISBN: 978-1-108-49295-9
• No. of pages: 316
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature & Culture; Cambridge Studies in Nineteent; Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works; Englisch, Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Autoren, English, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers