http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk:80/handle/1810/219491 Sat, 25 May 2013 05:25:03 GMT 2013-05-25T05:25:03Z http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk:80/handle/1810/244334 Title: The poetics of mid-Victorian scientific materialism in the writings of John Tyndall, W.K. Clifford and others Authors: Mackowiak, Jeffrey Robert Abstract: My dissertation examines the representations of materialism -- a philosophy stereotypically associated with a reductive, anti-theological and mechanistic world-picture -- in the published prose and (typically) unpublished poetry of several figures central to scientific discourse in the latter half of the nineteenth century, most notably W. K. Clifford, a mathematician, and John Tyndall, a physicist and media-savvy ‘champion of science’. These engagements, and representations, were not merely on the level of ‘direct’ argumentation, however. A self-consciously allusive, even polyphonous tone was far from uncommon in the many literatures arising from mid-Victorian scientific encounter, and this openness of form permitted both popularisers and critics of materialism to choose the vocabularies in which to relate their observations –- the texts with which they would engage –- towards specific ends. As I argue, such was a task they performed with great care and an often astonishing felicity: an essay on cosmology, after all, acquires quite a different colouration when interleaved with the cadences of Milton, another again if illustrated with quotations from Whitman or an epigram from ‘Tintern Abbey’. My 1st chapter provides a broader context for those that follow, analysing both changing nineteenth-century ideas of materialism and also a range of potential reactions to -– and inter alia a variety of the contrasting vernaculars used in illustration of –- contemporary metaphysical or ‘methodological’ materialism. My 2nd chapter offers a reading of Tyndall’s August 1874 Belfast Address, the locus classicus for practically all later elaborations of materialistic belief. My 3rd chapter contrasts the theologically orthodox position of James Clerk Maxwell (buttressed by allusions to the theologically doctrinaire George Herbert) with the radically atheistic and materialistic philosophy of Clifford (underpinned by the similarly atheistic Algernon Charles Swinburne). My 4th and 5th chapters are paired studies in the ‘private’ nuances of Tyndall’s ideology, elaborating on my 2nd chapter’s scrutiny of its more public attributes. The former discusses his notions of cosmic connectedness, ironically derived from the non-materialistic works of Carlyle. The latter examines both the exultancy and the despair explicit in Tyndall’s poetry and implicit in his prose. As I note in conclusion, such contrary emotions, phrased with striking clarity in Tyndall, are common in mid-Victorian writings concerning materialism, directly or indirectly. They are rooted in the hopes afforded by materialism’s explanatory prowess, on the one hand, and the ‘atrophy of spirit’ born of its austere, even dehumanising, epistemology, on the other; that is to say, in a salutary awareness of both power and pitfalls. Description: Examined by Dr Gowan Dawson and Prof. Rebecca Stott in February 2007. Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk:80/handle/1810/244334 2008-01-15T00:00:00Z http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk:80/handle/1810/238313 Title: History in the literary imagination: the telling of Nongqawuse and the Xhosa Cattle-Killing in South African literature and culture (1891-1937) Authors: Boniface Davies, Sheila Abstract: This thesis takes as its subject the millenarian movement of 1856–7, commonly known as the Xhosa Cattle-Killing. My project examines a range of literary representations of this seminal moment in South African history: novels, plays, and short stories in English or English translation. The period under consideration encompasses the earliest literary responses to the Cattle-Killing and includes critical historical-political moments such as: the incorporation of the last independent black territory into the Cape Colony, the creation of the Union of South Africa, the passing of the Land Act, the enfranchisement of white women and the enactment of Hertzog’s ‘native bills’. The project consists of close, contextual readings, and the approach is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. In this dissertation I examine the meaning that has accrued to the Cattle-Killing, and the role that literary accounts have played in interpreting and defining this pivotal event in the historical consciousness of their sometimes considerable audiences. In some cases, these creative works have anticipated trends in formal historiography and suggested new ways to interrogate the evidence. But the accounts do more than creatively reconstruct the past. They are also implicated in their respective presents and use the Cattle-Killing to ‘write out’ contemporaneous concerns: be it female emancipation, ‘native education’ or Black Nationalism. The various manifestations of the Cattle-Killing story chart not only the shifting ‘truth’ of the event but also the ways in which it has been made relevant and useable for different communities at various points in South Africa’s history. To read these accounts of the Cattle-Killing, I argue, is to ‘read’ the history of this period. While taking as its subject an event from 150 years ago, and literary responses from shortly after, my project contributes to wider, on-going conversations relating to history as a field of argument and literature as a social and historical force. A related aim is to contribute to the revaluation of early South African literature, which has been neglected or homogenized in recent years. My dissertation seeks to recuperate and complicate by representing a variety of subject positions and resuscitating voices discarded or forgotten. Description: E-thesis pagination different from hard-bound copy. Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk:80/handle/1810/238313 2011-02-08T00:00:00Z http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk:80/handle/1810/229765 Title: "It is written": representations of determinism in contemporary popular science writing and contemporary British fiction Authors: Smith, Bradon T L Abstract: This thesis examines the representation of two broad fields of science – the new physics (relativity and quantum mechanics) and the modern biological synthesis (genetics and evolutionary theory) – in two genres of writing – popular science writing and narrative fiction. Specifically, I consider the representations of determinism in recent works by a number of writers from both genres, concentrating on the literary techniques employed by popular science writers, and the scientific concepts incorporated by contemporary authors. I argue that there is a tendency in popular science books on the new physics to emphasise the indeterminacy supposedly implied by those theories, and that a number of recurrent metaphors are integral to this representation. Similarly, I find that the novelists and playwrights drawing on ideas from this field of science (such as Amis, Stoppard, Frayn and McEwan) also emphasise this indeterminacy, but in addition that they use these concepts borrowed from physics to question the adequacy of science as a monistic epistemological system. Popular science writing on genetics has a propensity, even while acknowledging the importance of environmental factors, to present a ‘gene-centric’ view, prioritising the effect of the genes in the development of an organism. Although these writers would (and do) deny the validity of genetic determinism, the emphasis on the role of genes and our evolutionary development gives support to the idea of the determining function of our biology. The metaphors and narratives used by popular science writers are again central to this representation. I go on to show how contemporary fiction writers (particularly McEwan and Byatt), in appropriating ideas from these scientific fields, critique this idea of biological determinism, and furthermore that they raise doubts about an exclusively scientific understanding of the world. I conclude this thesis by offering some thoughts on the epistemological role that literature might play in the face of this apparent dominance of a scientific conception of knowledge. Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk:80/handle/1810/229765 2011-01-11T00:00:00Z