Overview

This collection of essays explores how Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment developments in the earth sciences and related fields (paleontology, mining, archeology, seismology, oceanography, evolution, etc.) impacted on contemporary French culture. They reveal that geological ideas were a much more pervasive and influential cultural force than has hitherto been supposed. From the mid-eighteenth century, with the publication of Buffon's seminal Theorie de la Terre (1749), until the early twentieth century, concepts and figures drawn from the earth sciences inspired some of the most important French philosophers, novelists, political theorists, historians and popularizers of science of the time. This book charts the original and influential ways in which French writers and thinkers, such as Buffon, d'Holbach, Balzac, Sand, Verne, Gide and Malraux, exploited the earth sciences for very different ends. This volume will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars of French literature in the modern period, cultural historians of modern France, scholars of European studies, of French political history, of the History of Ideas or the History of Science as well as researchers in landscape and physical geography.

Full Product Details

Author:   Louise Lyle ,  David McCallam
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Editions Rodopi B.V.
Volume:   322
Dimensions:   Width: 15.00cm , Height: 1.60cm , Length: 22.00cm
ISBN:  

9789042024779

ISBN 10:   9042024771
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   01 January 2008
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Louise LYLE and David MCCALLAM: Introduction Section 1: The Enlightenment Benoit DE BAERE: Natural Catastrophe in Buffon's Histoire Naturelle: Earth Science, Aesthetics, Anthropology Gregory QUENET: When Geology Encounters a Real Catastrophe: From Theoretical Earthquakes to the Lisbon Disaster Rebecca FORD: Images of the Earth, Images of Man: The Mineralogical Plates of the Encyclopedie Ian D. ROTHERHAM and David MCCALLAM: Peat Bogs, Marshes and Fen as Disputed Landscapes in Late Eighteenth-Century France and England Section 2: Early to Mid-Nineteenth Century Greg KERR: Nous avons enlace le globe de nos reseaux... : Spatial Structure in Saint-Simonian Poetics Ceri CROSSLEY: Pierre Leroux and the Circulus: Soil, Socialism and Salvation in Nineteenth-Century France Scott SPRENGER: Mind as Ruin: Balzac's Sarrasine and the Archaeology of Self Claire LE GUILLOU: Archaeology - A Passion of George Sand Section 3: Late Nineteenth Century Tim UNWIN: Jules Verne and the Discovery of the Natural World Anca MITROI: Jules Verne's Transylvania: Cartographic Omissions Kiera VACLAVIK: Undermining Body and Mind? The Impact of the Underground in Nineteenth-Century Children's Literature Ben FISHER: Alfred Jarry's Neo-Science: Liquidizing Paris and Debunking Verne Section 4: Early Twentieth Century Louise LYLE: Reading Environmental Apocalypse in J.-H. Rosny Aine's Terrestrial Texts David H. WALKER : Andre Gide, Eugene Rouart and le retour a la terre Martin HURCOMBE: Down to Earth: Andre Malraux's Political Itinerary and the Natural World Index of Names

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Author Information

Louise Lyle is Lecturer in French at the University of London Institute in Paris. She researches and has published on the interface of science and literature in fin-de-siecle France, specifically the use of social Darwinism in this period. David McCallam is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is author of Chamfort and the French Revolution (Oxford, 2002) and L'Art de l'equivoque chez Laclos (Geneva, 2008), as well as of a number of articles on late eighteenth-century French volcanology.

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