Author |
Graham, Peter W. |
Year |
2008 |
Publisher |
Farnham: Ashgate |
Number of pages |
214 |
ISBN |
9780754658511 |
Keywords |
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Abstract
Amazon (2013):
Are Jane Austen and Charles Darwin the two great English empiricists of the nineteenth
century? Peter W. Graham poses this question as he brings these two icons of nineteenth-century
British culture into intellectual conversation in his provocative new book. Graham
shows that while the one is generally termed a naturalist (Darwin's preferred term
for himself) and the other a novelist, these characterizations are at least partially
interchangeable, as each author possessed skills that would serve well in either arena.
Both Austen and Darwin are naturalists who look with a sharp, cold eye at the concrete
particulars of the world around them. Both are in certain senses novelists who weave
densely particularized and convincingly grounded narratives that convey their personal
observations and perceptions to wide readerships.When taken seriously, the words and
works of Austen and Darwin encourage their readers to look closely at the social and
natural worlds around them and form opinions based on individual judgment rather than
on transmitted opinion.Graham's four interlocked essays begin by situating Austen
and Darwin in the English empirical tradition and focusing on the uncanny similarities
in the two writers' respective circumstances and preoccupations. Both Austen and Darwin
were fascinated by sibling relations. Both were acute observers and analysts of courtship
rituals. Both understood constant change as the way of the world, whether the microcosm
under consideration is geological, biological, social, or literary. Both grasped the
importance of scale in making observations. Both discerned the connection between
minute, particular causes and vast, general effects. Employing the trenchant analytical
talents associated with his subjects and informed by a wealth of historical and biographical
detail and the best of recent work by historians of science, Graham has given us a
new entree into Austen's and Darwin's writings.