Category: Reviews
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Feder, Helena, Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman
Helena Feder, Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman (Abingdon: Routledge 2014) 192 pp. £95.00 Hb. ISBN: 978-1-409-40157-5 In Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman, first published by Ashgate in 2014, Helena Feder reinterprets that ‘most enduring of modern Western cultural forms’ – the Bildungsroman – as ‘humanism’s…
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Hughes, William, That Devil’s Trick: Hypnotism and the Victorian Popular Imagination
William Hughes, That Devil’s Trick: Hypnotism and the Victorian Popular Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2015) 256 pp. Hb £70. ISBN 978-0-7190-7483-7 It is the sign of a good book when the reviewer’s main criticism is a quibble with the accuracy of its title. Despite the suggested focus on hypnotism, the main emphasis throughout is…
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Purton, Valerie (ed), Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science
Valerie Purton (ed), Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science (New York and London: Anthem Press 2013) 192 pp. £70.00 Hb, £25.00 Pb. ISBN 9780857280763 The real author of Tennyson’s poems was in fact Charles Darwin; or so asserted Algernon Charles Swinburne in a spoof published in the Nineteenth Century in 1888.…
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Ryan, Lorraine, Memory and Spatiality in Post-Millennial Spanish Narrative
Lorraine Ryan, Memory and Spatiality in Post-Millennial Spanish Narrative (Farnham: Ashgate 2014) 248 pp. Hb, £95. ISBN: 9781472435705 During the Spanish civil war, the liberal faction of Spain failed to create a new republic and after the war the country collapsed into oppression. Spain passed through a period of recovery which emphasized memory and was…
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Zarimis, Maria, Darwin’s Footprint: Cultural Perspectives on Evolution in Greece (1880-1930s)
Maria Zarimis, Darwin’s Footprint: Cultural Perspectives on Evolution in Greece (1880-1930s) (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press 2015) 333 pp. £38 Hb, £22 Pb. ISBN: 978-963-386-077-9 Although Darwin’s name will conjure up in most readers’ minds a familiar assortment of venerable historic figures, Zarimis immediately indicates in Darwin’s Footprint that her subjects will…
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Cave, Terence, Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism
Terence Cave, Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism (Oxford University Press 2016) xiv + 199 pp. £25.00 Hb. ISBN: 9780198749417 Although Terence Cave’s Thinking with Literature contains the early disclaimer that it is not meant to be read as an introductory handbook, teaching manual, or systematic account of cognitive literary criticism (viii), it lends…
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Malley, Shawn, From Archaeology to Spectacle in Victorian Britain: The Case of Assyria, 1845-1854
Shawn Malley, From Archaeology to Spectacle in Victorian Britain: The Case of Assyria, 1845-1854 (Farnham: Ashgate 2012) 220pp. £95 Hb. ISBN: 978-1-4094-2689-9 In this detailed and rigorously researched study, Shawn Malley examines Austen Henry Layard’s excavation of Assyria, and its subsequent impact upon literary, cultural, religious and scientific spheres. Concurrently, he grapples with the imperialistic…
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Livingstone, David N., Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution
David N. Livingstone, Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2014) x + 263 pp. £26 Hb. ISBN: 978-1-4214-1326-6 In the early 1990s, John Hedley Brooke upset the troublingly persistent narrative of a conflict between science and religion. Instead, Brooke noticed the historical complexity and…
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Lewens, Tim, Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges
Tim Lewens, Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) 224 pp. £25.00 Hb. ISBN: 9870199674183 As a leading Darwin scholar, Tim Lewens is admirably qualified to produce a useful work on the knotty problems of cultural evolution. In this book Lewens guides us through the various arguments on evolutionary approaches to cultural change,…
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Monnet, Agnieszka Soltysik, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic
Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic (Farnham: Ashgate 2010) 174 pp. £95.00 Hb. ISBN: 9781409400561 The cover art for Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet’s study elucidates her topic with striking precision. Grant Wood’s American Gothic is an starting point for Monnet’s discussion of the American gothic literary tradition. Much of the introduction maps…
