Darwin, Literature and Victorian RespectabilityCambridge University Press, 12/04/2007 - 282 páginas 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 work in literary studies, Dawson sheds light on the well-known debates over evolution by examining them in relation to the murky underworlds of Victorian pornography, sexual innuendo, unrespectable freethought 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 legal definitions of obscenity, Dawson reveals the underlying tensions between Darwin's theories and conventional notions of Victorian respectability. |
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Aesthetics Alfred Alfred Russel Wallace Algernon Charles Annie Besant Cambridge University Press Chapman Charles Bradlaugh Charles Darwin Chatto and Windus Chicago Press Clarendon Press Contemporary Review 18 Critics Descent Edinburgh Review Edward Moxon English Fortnightly Review 22 Frederick Gamiani Gender George Eliot Haven and London History of Biology History of Science James John Murray John Tyndall Kegan Paul Lectures and Essays Letters London Longmans Lucy Clifford Macmillan Macmillan's Magazine Mallock Man's Place Manchester University Press Mivart National Reformer 1877 Nineteenth Century Obscenity Oxford University Press Paris Pater Place in Nature Poems Poetry Politics of Evolution Pornography Relation to Sex Review 22 n.s. Richard Robert Routledge Science 35 Science and Literature Science and Victorian Science in Context Selection in Relation Smith Suppression of Vice Swinburne Tennyson Thomas Henry Huxley Tyndall's University of Chicago Victorian Britain Victorian Culture Victorian England Victorian Science vols Walter Westminster Review William Heinemann Yale University Press York