Category: Reviews
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Bourcier, Simon de, Pynchon and Relativity: Narrative Time in Thomas Pynchon’s Later Novels
Simon de Bourcier, Pynchon and Relativity: Narrative Time in Thomas Pynchon’s Later Novels. Continuum Literary Studies, (Bloomsbury: London 2013). 240pp. Hb £45.50, Pb £13.99. ISBN: 978-1441130099 Simon de Bourcier’s study sets out to provide a substantial and exhaustive scientific reading of Thomas Pynchon’s late-career novels, in particular Against the Day and Mason & Dixon. Within the active…
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Priestman, Martin, The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin: Enlightened Spaces, Romantic Times
Martin Priestman, The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin: Enlightened Spaces, Romantic Times(Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). xiv + 310 pp. £70 Hb. ISBN 978-1-4724-1954-5. Erasmus Darwin was a successful doctor, inventor, scientist and poet, a vast man with an even vaster range of interests and capabilities once described by Coleridge as ‘the first literary character in Europe’ (quoted…
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Ebury, Katherine, Modernism and Cosmology: Absurd Lights,
Katherine Ebury, Modernism & Cosmology: Absurd Lights, (Palgrave 2014). 224pp. Hb £55.00. EPUB. PDF. ISBN 9781137393746 In her 2014 monograph Modernism and Cosmology, Katherine Ebury presents three case studies from Irish modernism to analyse the influence of cosmology on modernist writing. The engagingly written work offers a close reading that focuses on references to the new physics in…
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Lightman, Bernard and Bennett Zon (eds), Evolution and Victorian Culture
Bernard Lightman and Bennett Zon (eds.), Evolution and Victorian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2014), xviii + 320pp. £60 hb. ISBN 9781107028425 At first glance, it seems reasonable to wonder whether the academic world needs another books about Evolution and Victorian Culture. Monumental 1980s studies of Darwin’s influence on his society (most famously those by Gillian…
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Knight, Leah, Reading Green in Early Modern England
Leah Knight, Reading Green in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 166pp. £60 hb, ebook PDF, ebook ePUB. ISBN: 978-1-4724-0621-7. Leah Knight’s Reading Green in Early Modern England explores the varied meanings and practices associated with “green” in sixteenth and seventeenth century English texts. As Knight is careful to note, green or “going green” did not carry the same…
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Reyes, Xavier Aldana, Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horrror Film
Xavier Aldana Reyes, Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horrror Film (Cardiff: University of Wales Press). 272 pp. £95 hb, £95 ebook. ISBN 978-1-78316-1, e-ISSBN 978-1-78316-093-8. Xavier Aldana Reyes’ Body Gothic aims to reclaim the somatic experience of Gothic texts and consider how the body is figured, disfigured and dismantled in horror. “Body…
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Walpert, Bryan, Resistance to Science in Contemporary American Poetry
Bryan Walpert, Resistance to Science in Contemporary American Poetry (Routledge, 2011), 220pp. $141. ISBN 978-0415893348 Despite the rapid expansion of scientific research after the second world war into every corner of the world, animal, vegetable, mineral and human, studies of the impact of this growing scientific control of knowledge on poetry remain scarce. This is…
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Pender, Stephen and Nancy S. Struever (eds), Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe
Stephen Pender and Nancy S. Struever (eds.), Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 310 pp. £74 hb. ISBN 9781409430223. The cover of Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe, which features the Greco-Roman figure Lady Rhetoric holding a caduceus, hints at the tandem relationship between rhetoric and medicine during the Renaissance…
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Miller, Sean, Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary
Sean Miller, Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013), 256pp. $50. ISBN 978-0-472-11866-3. O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht gibt. Sie wußtens nicht und habens jeden Falls – sein Wandeln, seine Haltung, seinen Hals, bis in des stillen Blickes…
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Keene, Melanie, Science in Wonderland: The Scientific Fairytales of Victorian Britain
Melanie Keene, Science in Wonderland: The Scientific Fairytales of Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 256pp. Hb. £16.99 ISBN: 978-0-19-966265-4 Melanie Keene’s Science in Wonderland offers an engaging introduction to the Victorian use of wonder and fantastical elements in scientific writing and communication, particularly in works for children. Keene draws on a wide range…
