Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction (Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction)

By:

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into UK education collection to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis
Following the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Victorian anthropology made two apparently contradictory claims: it distinguished "civilized man" from animals and "primitive" humans and it linked them though descent. Paradoxically, it was by placing human history in a deep past shaped by minute, incremental changes (rather than at the apex of Providential order) that evolutionary anthropology could assert a new form of human exceptionalism and define civilized humanity against both human and nonhuman savagery. This book shows how fantastic Victorian and early Edwardian fictions—utopias, dystopias, nonsense literature, gothic horror, and children’s fables—untether human and nonhuman animal agency from this increasingly orthodox account of the deep past. As they imagine worlds that lift the evolutionary constraints on development and as they collapse evolution into lived time, these stories reveal (and even occupy) dynamic landscapes of cognitive descent that contest prevailing anthropological ideas about race, culture, and species difference.
Copyright:
2021

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
170 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781000392722
Related ISBNs:
9781032009988, 9780367722814, 9781003154181
Publisher:
Taylor and Francis
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Taylor & Francis
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Horror, Literature and Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

Reviews

No Rating Yet