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Examination of the links between science and literary history is providing new insight for scholars across a range of disciplines. In Wordsworth and the Geologists John Wyatt explores the hitherto unexamined relationship between a major Romantic poet and a group of scientists in the formative years of a new discipline, geology. Wordsworth's later poems and prose display unexpected knowledge of contemporary geology and a preoccupation with many of the philosophical issues concerned with the developing science of geology. Letters and diaries of a group of leading geologists reveal that they knew Wordsworth, and discussed their subject with him. Wyatt shows how the implications of such discussions challenge the simplistic version of 'two cultures', the Romantic-literary against the scientific materialistic; and he reminds us of the variety of interrelating discourses current between 1807 (the year of the foundation of the Geological Society of London) and 1850 (the year of Wordsworth's death).
List of contents
1. Introduction; 2. Wordsworth's geology: references and allusions; 3. 'Pronounce their benediction: speak of them as powers': the wider context of geological information; 4. Trinity men; 5. Order, clarity, distinctness; 6. 'The universality of nature's kingdom'?; 7. Duration and decay: the abyss of time; 8. Geology: the poetic discipline; 9. Geologists and humanity; 10. Conclusion.
Summary
In this 1995 book, John Wyatt explores the relationship between literary history and science, through study of the friendship between Wordsworth and a group of scientists in the formative years of the new science of geology, and challenges the simplistic opposition between Romantic-literary and scientific-materialist cultures.
