Colonies, Cults and Evolution: Literature, Science and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Writing (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

The concept of culture now such an important term within both the arts and the sciences is a legacy of the nineteenth century By closely analyzing writings by evolutionary scientists such as Charles Darwin Alfred Russell Wallace and Herbert Spencer alongside those of literary figures including Wordsworth Coleridge Arnold Butler and Gosse David Amigoni shows how the modern concept of culture developed out of the interdisciplinary interactions between literature philosophy anthropology colonialism and in particular Darwin s theories of evolution He goes on to explore the relationship between literature and evolutionary science by arguing that culture was seen less as a singular idea or concept and more as a field of debate and conflict This timely and highly original book includes much new material on the history of evolutionary thought and its cultural impact and will be of interest to scholars of intellectual and scientific history as well as of literature