Darwin Becomes Art

Aesthetic Vision in the Wake of Darwin: 1870-1920

By: Hugh Ridley

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Paperback | 1 January 2014

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Paperback
240 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 1.4

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This book analyses Darwin's influence on art and the effect of his science on experiences of beauty. The first chapter discusses Darwin's great forerunner, Alexander von Humboldt, and his contribution to thinking about the relationship between science and beauty. The second examines the public reception of Darwin in Germany, focusing on the German Naturalists and the important scientific controversies which Darwin's idea provoked. It shows the political use of science (Hackel and Virchow) and foreshadows present-day debates between Darwinism and Creationism, science and an idealized view of nature. Against this background the book shows the effect of Darwin on three important fields: the perception of landscape in major writers (Zola, Lawrence, Jacobsen, Benn and Brecht) before 1920; the portrayal of wild life, as revealed in bird-painting; and the understanding of the relationship between the human body and character. The book brings together for the first time Darwin's The Expression of Emotion with the work of major European novelists (Eliot, Gutzkow and Freytag), focusing on the place of the older understandings contained in physiognomy, which Darwin challenged, on the portrayal of ethnicity, and on debates about acting, including for the young Brecht.

Industry Reviews

"In Darwin Becomes Art, Hugh Ridley studies the impact evolution has on the imaginative mind, looking at how science affected the way late Victorians looked at beauty. [...] The book may be challenging for those lacking a certain degree of knowledge of German thought, but Ridley's insights into how Darwin teaches us how to be surprised by beauty rather than viewing it as an inevitable conclusion is admirable - his chapters on bird portraitures and literature especially so." - Nancee Reeves, University of Georgia, in: Victorian Studies 58.4, pp. 777-779 "Resumierend bleibt festzuhalten, dass Darwin mehr als jeder andere dafur gesorgt hat, dass die Vorstellung von der Veranderung der biologischen Arten allgemeinen UEberzeugung wurde. [...] Ridleys Werk kann trotz kleine Einschrankungen sowohl wissenschaftlichen Laien wie auch Natur- und Geisteswissenschaftlern als eine Vertiefung dies Thematik empfohlen werden." - Uwe Hossfeld, Jena, in: Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 252.2 (2015), pp. 428-429

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