George Eliot's hypothesis of reality -- Is life worth living? -- Ruskin and Darwin and the matter of matter -- Scientific discourse as an alternative to faith -- In defense of Positivism -- Why science isn't literature : the importance of differences -- Realism -- Dickens, secularism, and agency -- The heartbeat of the squirrel -- Real toads in imaginary gardens, or vice versa.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
George Levine is one of the world's leading scholars of Victorian literature and culture. This collection of his essays develops the key themes of his work: the intersection of nineteenth-century British literature, culture and science and the relation of knowledge and truth to ethics. The essays offer perspectives on George Eliot, Thackeray, the Positivists, and the Scientific Naturalists, and reassess the complex relationship between Ruskin and Darwin. In readings of Lawrence and Coetzee, Levine addresses Victorian and modern efforts to push beyond the limits of realist art by testing its aesthetic and epistemological limits in engagement with the self and the other. Some of Levine's most important contributions to the field are reprinted, in revised and updated form, alongside previously unpublished material. Together, these essays cohere into an exploration both of Victorian literature and culture and of ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic problems fundamental to our own times.
OTHER EDITION IN ANOTHER MEDIUM
Title
Realism, ethics and secularism.
TOPICAL NAME USED AS SUBJECT
English literature-- 19th century-- History and criticism.
Ethics-- Great Britain-- History-- 19th century.
Knowledge, Theory of, in literature.
Literature and science-- Great Britain-- History-- 19th century.