Résumés
Abstract
In this article I will examine how Erasmus and Charles Darwin responded to the epic tradition in their writings, and how the legacy of epic was worked into their respective evolutionary visions. Erasmus Darwin formulated a brief sketch of his evolutionary theory in prose in his medical textbook Zoonomia, but when he came to flesh out his conception of evolution in imaginative and empirical detail he turned to verse. His poem The Temple of Nature, published posthumously in 1803, self-consciously evokes epic conventions and engages intertextually with Milton, Lucretius and Ovid in particular. One of the poems that Erasmus Darwin replied to in his verse – Paradise Lost – was by Charles Darwin’s account his constant companion during his voyage on the Beagle. Through exploring how both Darwins responded to Milton’s vision of Creation, and to the counter-visions offered by other epic poets and by Satan within Milton’s own poem, it is possible to see how fundamental epic poetry was to the generation of evolutionary theory and the forms it came to take.
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Amigoni, David, and James Elwick, editors. The Evolutionary Epic. Pickering and Chatto, 2011.
- Beer, Gillian. “Darwin and Romanticism.” Wordsworth Circle, vol. 41, no. 1, 2010, pp. 3-9.
- Beer, Gillian. Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2000.
- Beer, Gillian. “Darwin’s Reading and the Fictions of Development.” The Darwinian Heritage, edited by David Kohn, Princeton UP, 1985, pp. 543-88.
- Bennet, Henry Grey. “Some account of the Island of Teneriffe.” Transactions of the Geological Society of London, O.S. vol. 2, 1814, pp. 286-304.
- Buckland, Adelene. Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology. U of Chicago Press, 2013.
- Buckland, William. Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology. 2 vols, London, 1836.
- Buckland, William. “On the Discovery of a New Species of Pterodactyle in the Lias at Lyme Regis.” Transactions of the Geological Society of London, N.S. vol. 3, 1829, pp. 217-22.
- Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron. The Oxford Authors: Byron. Edited by Jerome J. McGann, Oxford UP, 1986.
- Darwin, Charles. Autobiographies. Edited by Michael Neve and Sharon Messenger. Penguin, 2002.
- Darwin, Charles. Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary. Edited by R. D. Keynes. Cambridge UP, 2001.
- Darwin, Charles. Charles Darwin’s Notebooks from the Voyage of the Beagle. Edited by Gordon Chancellor and John Van Wyhe, Cambridge UP, 2009.
- Darwin, Charles. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. Edited by John van Wyhe, 2002- , http://darwin-online.org.uk/ Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.
- Darwin, Charles. Darwin Correspondence Project. Edited by James A. Secord et al, 1974- , U of Cambridge, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.
- Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2 vols, London, 1871.
- Darwin, Charles. The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London, 1872.
- Darwin, Charles. Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle. London, 1839.
- Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Speciesby Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London, 1859.
- Darwin, Erasmus. The Botanic Garden; A Poem, in Two Parts. 2 vols, London: 1791.
- Darwin, Erasmus. The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes. London, 1803.
- Darwin, Erasmus. The Temple of Nature: A Romantic Circles Electronic Edition. Edited by Martin Priestman, U of Maryland, 2006, http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/darwin_temple/index.html Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.
- Darwin, Erasmus. Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life. Vol. 1, London: 1794.
- Dawkins, Richard. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Penguin, 1998.
- Dentith, Simon. Epic and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge UP, 2006.
- Ford, Katherine. The Role of the Royal Society in Victorian Literary Culture. PhD dissertation, University of Reading, UK, 2015.
- Forsyth, Neil. The Satanic Epic. Princeton UP, 2003.
- Gray, Erik. Milton and the Victorians. Cornell UP, 2009.
- Griffiths, Devin. The Age of Analogy: Science and Literature between the Darwins. Johns Hopkins UP, 2016.
- Harris, Stuart. Erasmus Darwin’s Enlightenment Epic. Privately printed, 2002.
- Hesketh, Ian. “The Recurrence of the Evolutionary Epic.” Journal of the Philosophy of History, vol. 9, 2015, pp. 196-219.
- Holmes, John. “Algernon Swinburne, Anthropologist.” Journal of Literature and Science, vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, pp. 16-39.
- Holmes, John. “The Challenge of Evolution in Victorian Poetry.” Evolution and Victorian Culture, edited by Bernard Lightman and Bennett Zon, Cambridge UP, 2014, pp. 39-63.
- Holmes, John. Darwin’s Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution. Edinburgh UP, 2009.
- Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Alexander Pope, 1715-20. London, 1806.
- Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Alexander Pope [with William Broome and Elijah Fenton], 1725-26. Edinburgh, 1761.
- Kirby, William. On the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation of Animals and in Their History Habits and Instincts. 2 vols, London, 1835.
- Leonard, John. Faithful Labourers: A Reception History of Paradise Lost, 1667-1970. 2 vols, Oxford UP, 2013.
- Levine, George. Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-Enchantment of the World. Princeton UP, 2006.
- Lightman, Bernard. Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences. U of Chicago Press, 2007.
- Lovelock, James. Homage to Gaia: The Life of an Independent Scientist. Oxford UP, 2000.
- Lucretius. Of the Nature of Things. Translated by Thomas Creech, 1682. 2 vols, London, 1714.
- Lyell, Charles. Principles of Geology. Edited by James A. Secord, Penguin, 1997.
- Meredith, George. The Poems of George Meredith. Edited by Phyllis B. Bartlett, 2 vols, Yale UP, 1978.
- Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Edited by Alastair Fowler, 2nd ed. revised, Routledge, 2007.
- Morwood, Mike, and Penny van Oosterzee. A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia. Smithsonian Books, 2007.
- Newlyn, Lucy. Paradise Lost and the Romantic Reader. Oxford UP, 1993.
- Nixon, Jude V. “Thomas Carlyle’s Igdrasil.” Carlyle Studies Annual, vol. 25, 2009, pp. 49-58.
- O’Connor, Ralph. “From the Epic of Earth History to the Evolutionary Epic in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Journal of Victorian Culture, vol. 14, 2009, pp. 207-223.
- O’Connor, Ralph. “Science for the General Reader.” The Routledge Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Science, edited by John Holmes and Sharon Ruston, Routledge, 2017, pp. 155-71.
- Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by [John Dryden and others], edited by Sir Samuel Garth, 1717. London: 1826.
- Paley, William. Natural Theology, or The Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature. Edited by Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight, Oxford UP, 2006.
- Priestman, Martin. The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin: Enlightened Spaces, Romantic Times. Ashgate, 2013.
- Richards, Robert J. The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. U of Chicago Press, 2002.
- Secord, James A. Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. U of Chicago Press, 2000.
- Stafford, Fiona. The Last of the Race: The Growth of a Myth from Milton to Darwin. Oxford UP, 1994.
- Syme, Patrick. Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with Additions, arranged so as to render it highly useful to the Arts and Sciences. 2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1821.
- Virgil. Virgil’s Aenied. Translated by John Dryden, London, 1884.
- Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Abacus, 1999.
- Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. 2nd ed., Harvard UP, 2004.