Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History)

In the nineteenth century, philology—especially comparative philology—made impressive gains as a discipline, thus laying the foundation for the modern field of linguistics. In Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, Stephen G. Alter examines how comparative philology provided a genealogical model of language that Darwin, as well as other scientists and language scholars, used to construct rhetorical parallels with the common-descent theory of evolution.