Marking Time: Romanticism and Evolution
© 2017
Scholars have long studied the impact of Charles Darwin’s writings on nineteenth-century culture. However, few have ventured to examine the precursors to the ideas of Darwin and others in the Romantic period.
Marking Time, edited by Joel Faflak, analyses prevailing notions of evolution by tracing its origins to the literary, scientific, and philosophical discourses of the long nineteenth century. The volume’s contributors revisit key developments in the history of evolution prior to The Origin of Species and explore British and European Romanticism’s negotiation between the classic idea of a great immutable chain of being and modern notions of historical change. Marking Time reveals how Romantic and post-Romantic configurations of historical, socio-cultural, scientific, and philosophical transformation continue to exert a profound influence on critical and cultural thought.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 336 pages
- Dimensions: 6.4in x 1.1in x 9.3in
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Reviews
"…the essays in this volume offer interesting contributions to our understanding of the Romantic conception of natural history and its relation to Darwinian evolution – pointing toward the possibility of expanding the contours of the ‘Romantic Darwin’ narrative."
Andrea Gambarotto, Universite Catholique de Louvain
HPLS vol 40"Marking Time: Romanticism and Evolution, thoughtfully edited by Joel Faflak, presents a multiplicity of thinkers delving deeply into the possibility and potential for entanglement among temporality, Romanticism, and evolution."
Dewey W. Hall, California State Polytechnic University
European Romantic Review, vol 30 1"The importance of pre-Darwinian theorists of evolution is receiving more critical attention. Revealing how notions of evolution were very current and contested in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Marking Time illustrates how Romantic concerns with organicism, vitalism and natural history fed into contemporary understandings of natural development. Marking Time is a very impressive contribution to the currently vibrant subject of science and Romanticism, and highlights the work of leading scholars in the field."
Peter J. Kitson, professor of English Literature, University of East Anglia"Containing superb, thought-provoking essays, Marking Time raises new questions about Darwin and the precursors and consequences of his thought."
Tim Fulford, professor of English, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK -
Author Information
Joel Faflak is Professor in the Department of English and Writing Studies and Director of the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities at Western University. -
Table of contents
List of Illustrations
Marking Time: Romanticism and Evolution
Joel Faflak
Part 1 Romanticism's Darwin
1. Plants, Analogy, and Perfection: Loose and Strict Analogies
Gillian Beer
2. Darwin and the Mobility of Species
Alan Bewell
3. Darwin’s Ideas
Matthew Rowlinson
Part 2 Romantic Temporalities
4. Deep Time in the South Pacific: Scientific Voyaging and the Ancient/Primitive
Analogy
Noah Heringman
5. Malthus Our Contemporary?: Toward a Political Economy of Sex
Maureen N. McLane
Part 3 Goethe and the Contingencies of Life
6. Goethe's Morphology
Gábor Áron Zemplén
7. Vertiginous Life: Goethe, Bones, and Italy
Andrew Piper
8. Taking Chances
Theresa M. Kelley
Part 4 Evolutionary Idealisms
9. Did Goethe and Schelling Endorse Species Evolution?
Robert J. Richards
10. The Vitality of Idealism: Life and Evolution in Schelling’s and Hegel’s Systems
Tilottama Rajan
11. Degeneration: Inversions of Teleology
Joan Steigerwald
Contributors
Index
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Subjects and Courses
