Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of Evolution

309 Pages·2019·21.453 MB·English

by  Ian Duncan

h uman forms

Human Forms
the novel in the age
of evolution
Ian Duncan
princeton university press
princeton & oxford
Copyright © 2019 by Prince ton University Press
Published by Prince ton University Press
41 William Street, Prince ton, New Jersey 08540
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press . princeton . edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Control Number 2019931719
ISBN 978-0-691-17507-2
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
Editorial: Anne Savarese and Jenny Tan
Production Editorial: Jill Harris
Jacket Design: Layla Mac Rory
Production: Merli Guerra
Publicity: Alyssa Sanford and Keira Andrews
Copyeditor: Hank Southgate
Jacket image: George Baxter, The Crystal Palace from the Great Exhibition,
installed at Sydenham: sculptures of prehistoric creatures in the foreground.
Process print, ca. 1864. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection
This book has been composed in Miller
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
For Ayşe

contents
Acknowl edgments  · i x
introduction The Human Age 1
chapter 1 The Form of Man 31
Conjecture, History, Science, Fiction 31
The Faculty of Perfection 41
The Formation of Humanity 44
The Paragon of Animals 49
chapter 2 The Form of the Novel 55
Novelistic Revolution 55
Bildungsroman 61
Infinity or Totality 67
The Classical Form of the Historical Novel 71
The Dignity of the Human Race, the Glory
of the World 75
Dark Unhappy Ones 82
chapter 3 Lamarckian Historical Romance 86
Of Paris 87
Retrograde Evolution 100
Reading in the Dark 109
Le grotesque au revers du sublime 113
The Great Book of Mankind 118
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[ viii ] contents
chapter 4 Dickens: Transformist 123
No Humanity Here 123
The Poetry of Science 129
Dickens’s Teratology 133
The Prose of the World 141
Visionary Dreariness 145
The Noise of the World 152
chapter 5 George Eliot’s Science Fiction 158
We Belated Historians 158
Knowledge and Its Languages 163
Species Consciousness 169
An Intellectual Passion 177
Involuntary, Palpitating Life 184
An Inherited Yearning 189
Shadows of the Coming Race 199
Notes  · 2 01
Bibliography  ·  249
Index  · 2 79
acknowle dgments
i began research for H uman Forms during my term as a visiting
scholar at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, in the winter of 2009. Subse-
quent visiting appointments, at the Department of Eng lish (2012) and the
Center for Advanced Studies (2015) at Ludwig- Maximilians- Universität,
Munich, and at the En glish Department and Council of the Humani-
ties, Prince ton (2017), afforded precious time for thinking and writing, as
well as opportunities to try out emerging ideas on new constituencies of
students and colleagues (bless them). I thank my hosts for their unstint-
ing generosity and kindness: Cevza and Alpar Sevgen at Boğaziçi; Julia
Schreiner, Anna Jakubowska, and (especially) Christoph Bode at LMU;
Deborah Nord and Sarah Chihaya at Prince ton. Thanks, too, to Steffi
Fricke, Sabrina Kessler, Katharina Pink, Felicitas Meinhard, and other
participants in the Romanticism Colloquium at LMU; Isabel Schneider,
Anna Kunde, and Doris Haseidl at the LMU Eng lish Department; Moritz
Baumstark, Annette Meyer, and Susanne Schaffrath at CAS; my LMU
students; the members of my Prince ton gradu ate seminar; and Catie
Crandell and Camey VanSant, who org an ized the Victorian Colloquium at
Prince ton. The core of my research and writing took place here at Berke-
ley, an intellectual environment that continues to demand the best from
all of us: I don’t think I would have attempted this proj ect anywhere e lse.
So thanks, first, to my fabulous gradu ate students: those who helped out
as research assistants, Monica Soare, Slavica Naumovska, Ella Mershon,
Jesse Cordes Selbin, Katherine Ding, Wendy Xin, and Veronica Mittnacht,
as well as others whose work it has been my privilege to supervise (say
rather, to follow) over the past dec ade: Ruth Baldwin, Catherine Cronquist
Browning, Marisa Palacios Knox, Ben Cannon, Charity Ketz, Margaret
Kolb, Luke Terlaak Poot, Lauren Naturale, Jessica Crewe, Oya Erez, and
Tim Heimlich, as well as Batya Ungar-S argon, Jessica Ling, Claire Marie
Stancek and Lise Gaston; Tanya Llewellyn and Mark Taylor at Stanford;
and visiting postdoctoral fellows Juan Sanchez and John Savarese. Thanks
also to my incomparable En glish Department colleagues in Romanticism
(however we define it!): Steve Goldsmith, Kevis Goodman, Celeste Lan-
gan, Janet Sorensen, Anne- Lise François, Elisa Tamarkin, and Amanda
Goldstein; and in Victorian studies: Cathy Gallagher, David Miller, Kent
Puckett, and Grace Lavery; also to Ann Banfield, Mitch Breitwieser, Dori
[ ix ]