Publisher:
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; New York, NY
Principles of species taxonomy were contested ground throughout the nineteenth century, including those governing the classification of humans. Matthew Rowlinson shows that taxonomy was a literary and cultural project as much as a scientific one. His...
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Principles of species taxonomy were contested ground throughout the nineteenth century, including those governing the classification of humans. Matthew Rowlinson shows that taxonomy was a literary and cultural project as much as a scientific one. His investigation explores animal species in Romantic writers including Gilbert White and Keats, taxonomies in Victorian lyrics and the nonsense botanies and alphabets of Edward Lear, and species, race, and other forms of aggregated life in Darwin's writing, showing how the latter views these as shaped by unconscious agency. Engaging with theoretical debates at the intersection of animal studies and psychoanalysis, and covering a wide range of science writing, poetry, and prose fiction, this study shows the political and psychic stakes of questions about species identity and management. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details
1 online resource (xvii, 236 pages),
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Notes:
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Jan 2024)
Method and field -- Species lyric -- "How can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?" Species poetics, onomatopoeia, and birdsong -- Onomatopoeia, nonsense, and naming : species poetics after Darwin's Origin -- Darwin's unconscious : history, the work of the negative, and natural selection -- Foreign bodies : the human species and its symptom -- "Whose blood is it?" Economies of blood in mid-Victorian poetry and medicine -- The totem and the vampire : species-identity in anthropology, literature, and psychoanalysis
