Mechanism and the Novel: Science in the Narrative Process

by Martha A. Turner

Overview

Martha Turner's book makes an important contribution to the growing studies of science and literature by examining the relationship between British fiction and the tradition of mechanistic science derived from Isaac Newton. It traces the evolution of the concept of mechanism among science writers and novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and undertakes detailed analysis of novels by Austen, Scott, Dickens, Meredith, Conrad, Lawrence, and Doris Lessing. The book provides a bridge between the mechanical philosophy of the eighteenth century and present-day habits of thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521443395
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/09/1993
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.51(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The concept of mechanism; 2. The Aristotelian logic of settlement in Austen's Pride and Prejudice; 3. Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor: empiricism, mechanism, imagination; 4. Cosmology and chaos in Dickens's Bleak House; 5. Scientific humanism and the comic spirit: from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel to The Egoist; 6. Old mindsets and new world-music in Conrad's The Secret Agent; 7. Women in Love: beyond fulfilment; 8. The mechanistic legacy: Lessing's Canopus in Argos: archives.

Editorial Reviews

"Turner's book is enjoyable to read, and offers many useful, thought-provoking readings of texts..." Victorian Studies

From the Publisher