Category: General and Theory
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Mittman, Asa Simon and Peter Dendle (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous
Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 598pp. £90 Hb. ISBN 978-1-4094-0754-6 BSLS members receive a 20% discount on Ashgate titles. Click here for details. From the serpent-legged Typhoeus in Hesiod’s Theogeny to the über-stylish parade of sparkly teen vampires that bite and brood…
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Tinkler-Villani, Valeria and C.C. Barfoot (eds), Restoring the Mystery of the Rainbow: Literature’s Refraction of Science
Valeria Tinkler-Villani and C.C. Barfoot (eds.), Restoring the Mystery of the Rainbow: Literature’s Refraction of Science, 2 vols (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011) 1106 pp. £198 hb. ISBN 978-90-420-3325-2. Having spent the past 14 months reading, off and on, the two volumes of Restoring the Mystery of the Rainbow, my overall feeling is of…
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Brooke, Keith (ed), Strange Divisions & Alien Territories
Keith Brooke (ed.), Strange Divisions & Alien Territories: The Sub-Genres of Science Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), xiv + 222 pp. £18.99 pb. ISBN 9780230249677. What makes up a genre? This volume proposes to examine science fiction (sf) by scrutinising its component parts, offering twelve introductory essays on sub-genres from cyberpunk to space opera. The…
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Boyd, Brian, Why Lyrics Last
Brian Boyd, Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), x+227 pp. £19.95 hb. ISBN 978-0-674-06564-2. In reviewing three evolutionary studies of epic poetry for the BSLS, I was persuaded by Brian Boyd’s On the Origin of Stories that, in the right hands, an evolutionary perspective on literature could…
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Lynall, Gregory, Swift and Science
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Allan Ingram
Gregory Lynall, Swift and Science: The Satire, Politics, and Theology of Natural Knowledge, 1690-1730 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), xii + 209 pp. Hb £50.00 ISBN 9780230343641. No period before the modern age saw such dizzying scientific progress as that covered by Greg Lynall’s book. In all fields of scientific knowledge, but most strikingly, and challengingly, in physics,…
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Lawlor, Clark, From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression
Clark Lawlor, From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 288 pages. £14.99. ISBN 978-0-19-958579-3. BSLS members are entitled to a 20% discount on academic titles published by Oxford University Press. Click here for details. What’s in a word? In his celebrated Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, William Styron…
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Liu, Lydia H., The Freudian Robot
Lydia H. Liu, The Freudian Robot: Digital Media and the Future of the Unconscious (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 302pp. £15.50 pb. ISBN 978-0-226-48683-3. What is the most powerful and widespread language in the world today? Is it English? Mandarin? Lydia Liu would probably argue that it is not one specific tongue, but the…
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Sleigh, Charlotte, Literature and Science
Charlotte Sleigh, Literature and Science, Outlining Literature Series (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 232 pp. £16.99 pb. ISBN: 9780230218178. Charlotte Sleigh’s book Literature and Science, published in Palgrave Macmillan’s Outlining Literature Series, offers a valuable new take on the history of the mutually responsive relationship between scientific and literary cultures in the last three hundred years.…
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Clarke, Bruce and Manuela Rossini (eds), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science
Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (eds), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science (London and New York: Routledge, 2010 [dated 2011]), 550pp. Hb £125.00. ISBN 978-0-415-49525-7. In reviewing The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science, I find myself faced with the challenge of how to discuss a book that, while difficult to get into, becomes…
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Shuttleworth, Sally, The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840-1900
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Jon Adams
Sally Shuttleworth, The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), xii+497 pp. £35.00 hb. ISBN 978-0199582563. Sally Shuttleworth needs no introduction to BSLS members; indeed, delegates at the 2007 conference in Birmingham heard some of the material from this new book in her plenary address…
