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Victorianism MA Intellectual Background Science • Thomas Arnold: „the atmosphere of paradox hanging around many of our ablest young men of the present day” (1838) Academic/scientific life • • • • • • • • 1826: University of London 1854/1856: University Acts Royal Institution the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS – 1831) Natural History Museum (Kensington, 1881-86) Magazines, industrial centres Humphrey Davy – Michael Faraday Scientific societies Science • David Friedrich Strauss: Das Leben Jesu (1835—tr. George Eliot 1864) • Mary Somerville: On The Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834) • Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology (183033) • (Philip Gosse: Omphalos [1857]) John Herschel by Julia Cameron Charles Darwin (1809-82) • Darwin: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) • Darwin: The Descent of Man (1871) Darwin’s voyages on The Beagle Galapagos Islands Finches (adaptive radiation) The Galapagos marine iguana (only marine lizard in the world) Giant tortoise Evolution • Preceding notions: – Divine Creation – Carl Lynnaeus: taxonomy – Transmutation (Lamarck: will/habit/consciousness/intention→ change), transformation, metamorphosis • Mankind put back to nature; ecological interdependence • Against fixity of species • Foundational notions: hyperproductivity, variability, natural/sexual selection, struggle for life • Emphasis on individual differences (vs. type) – not normative • Competition (basis for social Darwinism) • Adaptation/interaction (a web of complex relations – bw. species, individuals within species, the environment) George Eliot, Daniel Deronda • “Men can do nothing without the makebelieve of a beginning. Even Science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars’ unceasing journey.” Darwin and literature • Narrativity, metaphoricity • Bildungsroman, condition of England novel, social novel – part and whole – George Eliot: Adam Bede, Daniel Deronda, Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch • Naturalism (Zola, Maupassant, Hardy) – Determinism – Environment – „blood”