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Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction PDF

183 Pages·2021·7.722 MB·English
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Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction Following the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Victorian anthropology made two apparently contradictory claims: it distinguished “civilized man” from animals and “primitive” humans and it linked them though descent. Paradoxically, it was by placing human history in a deep past shaped by minute, incremental changes (rather than at the apex of Providential order) that evolutionary anthropology could assert a new form of human exceptionalism and define civilized humanity against both human and nonhuman savagery. This book shows how fantastic Victorian and early Edwardian fictions— utopias, dystopias, nonsense literature, gothic horror, and children’s fables—untether human and non-human animal agency from this increas- inglyorthodoxaccountofthedeeppast.Astheyimagineworldsthatliftthe evolutionary constraints on development and as they collapse evolution into lived time, these stories reveal (and even occupy) dynamic landscapes of cognitive descent that contest prevailing anthropological ideas about race, culture, and species difference. Anna Neill is Professor of English at the University of Kansas. She is the author of two other books: British Discovery Literature and the Rise of Global Commerce (2003) and Primitive Minds: Evolution and Spiritual Experience in the Victorian Novel (2013). Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film Rant Against the Regime Kirk Combe The Biopolitics of Gender in Science Fiction Feminism and Female Machines Emily Cox-Palmer-White Character and the Supernatural in Shakespeare and Achebe Kenneth Usongo Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction Anna Neill For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Speculative-Fiction/book- series/RSSF Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction Anna Neill Firstpublished2021 byRoutledge 52VanderbiltAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 andbyRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninforma business ©2021Taylor&Francis TherightofAnnaNeilltobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen assertedbyherinaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright, DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans, nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording, orinanyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissionin writingfromthepublishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationand explanationwithoutintenttoinfringe. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Names:Neill,Anna,1965-author. Title:HumanevolutionandfantasticVictorianfiction/AnnaNeill. Description:NewYork,NY:Routledge,2021.| Series:Routledgestudiesinspeculativefiction|Includesbibliographical referencesandindex.| Summary:“ThisbookexploresfantasticVictorianandearlyEdwardian fictions-utopias,dystopias,nonsenseliterature,gothichorror,and children’sfables-asresponsestoDarwiniananthropologyafter1860”– Providedbypublisher. Identifiers:LCCN2020054829|ISBN9780367722814(hardback)| ISBN9781003154181(ebook) Subjects:LCSH:Humanevolutioninliterature.|Englishfiction–19th century–Historyandcriticism.|Fantasyfiction,English–Historyand criticism.|Literatureandanthropology–England–History–19thcentury. Classification:LCCPR878.E95N452021|DDC823/.809356–dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2020054829 ISBN:978-0-367-72281-4(hbk) ISBN:978-1-032-00998-8(pbk) ISBN:978-1-003-15418-1(ebk) TypesetinSabon byTaylor&FrancisBooks To my teachers, especially Susan Lamb, Jonathan Lamb, and Neil Saccamano Contents List of figures ix Acknowledgements x 1 Introduction: Strange Stories and the Descent of Mind 1 Deep Time and the Victorian Novel 1 Human Exceptionalism and Evolutionary Progress 3 Strange Stories and Evolutionary Anthropology 6 Descent, Narrative, and Reading 13 2 Phylogeny Recapitulates Ontogeny: Fantastic Evolution and Fairy Science in The Water-Babies 22 Nature, Race, and a Marvelous Tale 22 Child Development and the Book of Nature 28 Evolutionary Science, Natural Theology, and Moral Ontogeny 33 Deep History and Fairy Science 35 3 Developmental Nonsense in the Alice Tales 41 Nonsense and Cognitive Evolution 42 Alice and the Science of Mental Development 45 Photographic Development 50 Developmental Nonsense 53 4 Orality, Print, and Evolution in the Just So Stories 61 Stories Oral and Read 61 Folklore, Empire, and Print Culture 63 The Collaborative Bedtime Tale 66 Mixed Forms and Colonial Ambivalence 70 viii Contents 5 Becoming Animal in The Island of Dr. Moreau 79 Artificial Evolution and Scientific Romance 80 Deep Time Travel and the Beast Within 83 Moreau and the Uncanny Beast 85 6 The Machinate Literary Mammal: Samuel Butler’s Strange Stories 94 Genius and the Organic Future 95 Common Sense and the Machinate Mammal in Erewhon 100 Writing for the Future: The Way of All Flesh 106 7 Exotic Geometry, Natural Religion, and the Liberal Case against Eugenics in Flatland 111 Abbott and the London City School 113 Natural Christianity and Liberal Learning 115 A Romance of Many Dimensions 117 8 Deep Time and the Socialist Utopia 129 Looking Backward 131 News from Nowhere 134 A Modern Utopia 139 An Evolutionary Utopia? 145 9 Coda: Shallowing the Past 148 References 151 Index 165 Figures 2.1 Robert Dudley’s historiated initial for Chapter 1 of The Water-Babies. The Water-Babies (London, 1863), p. 2. Image courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 26 2.2 Linley Sambourne, Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley inspect a water-baby. The Water-Babies (London, 1896), p. 69. Image courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 36 3.1 Lewis Carroll (C.L Dodgson), Alice Liddell as ‘The Beggar Maid,’ 1858 51 3.2 Lithographic copyof aphotographby Hugh Welch Diamond, Chronic Mania, 1858. Published in The Medical Times and Gazette, new series v. 16 (Jan-June 1858), 405 52 4.1 Rudyard Kipling, The Wise Baviann. From Just So Stories (1907),p.49.ImagecourtesyoftheKennethSpencerResearch Library 66 4.2 Kipling’s illustrations to “How the Alphabet was Made.” Image courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 75 4.3 Kipling’s final illustration to “How the Alphabet was Made.” Image courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 76 7.1–5 Abbott’s illustrations to Flatland. Image courtesy of The Kenneth Spencer Research Library 120 7.6 The Arion Press edition and first edition of Flatland. The first edition published by Seeley & Co. is in the foreground. The Arion Press edition is shown here with the permission of the Press. Image courtesy of The Kenneth Spencer Research Library 125

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