Limit search to available items
Book Cover
Book
Author Dawson, Gowan.

Title Darwin, literature and Victorian respectability / Gowan Dawson
Published Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2007

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  826.8036 D2721/D  AVAILABLE
Description xii, 282 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Series Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 57
Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 57
Contents 1. Introduction : Darwinian science and Victorian respectability -- 2. Charles Darwin, Algernon Charles Swinburne and sexualized responses to evolution -- 3. John Tyndall, Walter Pater and the nineteenth-century revival of paganism -- 4. Darwinism, Victorian freethought and the Obscene Publications Act -- 5. The refashioning of William Kingdon Clifford's posthumous reputation -- 6. T. H. Huxley, Henry Maudsley and the pathologization of aestheticism
Summary "The success of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories in mid-nineteenth-century Britain has long been attributed, in part, to his own adherence to strict standards of Victorian respectability, especially in regard to sex. Gowan Dawson contends that the fashioning of such respectability was by no means straightforward or unproblematic, with Darwin and his principal supporters facing surprisingly numerous and enduring accusations of encouraging sexual impropriety. Integrating contextual approaches to the history of science with recent work in literary studies, Dawson sheds new light on the well-known debates over evolution by examining them in relation to the murky underworlds of Victorian pornography, sexual innuendo, unrespectable free thought and artistic sensualism. Such disreputable and generally overlooked aspects of nineteenth-century culture were actually remarkably central to many of these controversies. Focusing particularly on aesthetic literature and new legal definitions of obscenity, Dawson reveals the underlying tensions between Darwin's theories and conventional notions of Victorian respectability."--BOOK JACKET
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Conduct of life -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
Obscenity (Law) -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
ISBN 9780521872492 hardback
0521872499 hardback