The Victorian era was a period of significant scientific discovery, and the impact of these breakthroughs permeated public discourse and culture. Sciences like astronomy, geology, and chemistry transformed into the fields we recognise today. What happened when these new scientific perspectives collided with long-held moral and religious paradigms? How did imaginative writing engage with, question, or confront these new forms of knowledge and their associated controversies? In what sorts of ways did scientific discoveries impact the shape of literary writing? This seminar will explore novels and poetry (including poems written by men of science in the period) to address such questions. We will read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and George Eliot’s Middlemarch, along with poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and the physicist James Clerk Maxwell. The seminar will also examine non-fiction writings by men of science, such as extracts from Charles Darwin’s work and John Tyndall’s ‘On the Scientific Use of the Imagination’. Key topics include science and religion, the pitfalls of scientific ambition, the emergence of a modern notion of ‘objectivity’, and the nuances of social class in the professionalisation of science.
- Enseignant·e: Niketa Gupte Narayan