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Sharon Ruston

Autor/a de Romanticism

4 obres 27 Membres 1 crítiques

Sobre l'autor

Sharon Ruston is Chair in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Salford, UK. She has published Shelley and Vitality (2005), Romanticism: An Introduction (2007), and has edited The Influence and Anxiety of the British Romantics: Spectres of Romanticism (1999), Literature and mostra'n més Science (2008) and co-edited Teaching Romanticism (2010). mostra'n menys

Obres de Sharon Ruston

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Data de naixement
1972
Gènere
female
Nacionalitat
UK

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Ressenyes

As its the title implies, Literature and Science is only themed in the very broadest of senses, containing essays that look at the intersection of literature and science in a few different ways.  I wish I could claim that there was some kind of common theoretical approach to the ones I enjoyed the most, but I don't think there was; there were simply some essays that were really fascinating and some that were not. 

Elaine Hobby's "'dreams and plain dotage': The Value of The Birth of Mankind (1540-1654)," which analyzed a popular science text about child-bearing for its attitudes about gender and sex, was among the most fascinating, especially as it traced the evolution of the book and pointed out some commonplaces about medieval thought that the book disproved.  I also liked Brian Baker’s "Evolution, Literary History and Science Fiction," which tangled with two scientific models for literary criticism, by Franco Moretti and Joseph Carroll, both of whom respond to what they see as problems in modern criticism. Morretti attempts to apply methodologies such as charts, maps, and graphs to literature, eschewing a set canon in favor of a statistical overview (since modern literary criticism cannot agree on a canon anymore), whereas Carroll is the foremost advocate of evolutionary literary criticism. Baker spends much of the essay explaining why Carroll's reasoning is not only faulty, but a return to earlier (and discarded) methods of literary analysis under guise of doing something "new." Despite my interest in science in literature, the application of science to literature (such as in evolutionary criticism or cognitive psychological readings) is an area that I have tentative objections to, many of which were amplified or added to here. (Also, I saw Carroll give a talk at the 2010 ACA/PCA conference, and it was awful.)

Also good were two essays that were able to link specific literary texts to both specific social concerns and specific ideas in/about science.  The danger of doing science in literature (and one I can fall victim to myself) is to look at texts as saying something about SCIENCE as some kind of monolithic whole, which is rarely the case.  Martin Willis's "Le Fanu's 'Carmilla', Ireland, and Diseased Vision" examines an 1872 vampire story about a country that's probably an allegory for Ireland, grounding itself very specifically in two contemporary theories about the spread of disease.  He nicely links moral laxity and disease both within the text and within contemporary writing.  David Amigoni's "'The luxury of storytelling': Science, Literature and Cultural Contest in Ian McEwan's Narrative Practice" analyzes as it does how McEwan's fiction responds to the “third culture” theory for how society and science interact. I'm not familiar with McEwan’s work myself, but I appreciated how the essay grounded a few very specific moments from McEwan’s fiction in a very specific contemporary debate about the role of science.  Both essays show a methodological rigor I find worthy of emulation.

Of the other four essays, only one really sticks out negatively, and that's because I think it almost makes an interesting point. I found the argument of Alice Jenkins's "George Eliot, Geometry and Gender" a little hard to follow, as despite asserting that opportunities for women to learn about geometry were rare, especially in formal settings (76), she also asserts that some realist novels depicted women studying Euclid "in order to emphasize their virginity.… [G]eometry is a marker of a naïve phase before sexuality initiates the individual into the social realm" (84). How could studying geometry be a marker of innocent femininity if traditionally young women did not do it? But overall, Jenkins indicates that geometry is often perceived as a male knowledge, to the extent that the novels The Castle-Builders and The Mill on the Floss both have male characters assert that women are far too flighty to actually comprehend geometry.  But the bit she quotes seems to actually satirize the male character for being dull and plodding, while the female is quick and insightful.  Overall, I found her potentially interesting argument inconsistent and often unsupported from the texts she was talking about. 

The other three were fine and potentially very good, just not interesting to me.  Despite the fact that the book could probably do with a more focused approach, it provides a nice range of way to look at science and literature, and all questions that that can provoke.
… (més)
 
Marcat
Stevil2001 | Jun 21, 2011 |

Estadístiques

Obres
4
Membres
27
Popularitat
#483,027
Valoració
4.0
Ressenyes
1
ISBN
9