Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era: Bodies of Knowledge

by Tim Fulford , Debbie Lee , Peter J. Kitson

• ISBN13: 9780521829199
• ISBN10: 0521829194
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-04
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The authors of this study examine the massive impact of colonial exploration upon British scientific and literary activity between the 1760s and 1830s. This broad-ranging survey will appeal to literary and cultural studies scholars.

Table of Contents

Part I. Exploration, Science and Literature: 1. Sir Joseph Banks and his Networks

2. Tahiti in London

London in Tahiti: tools of power

3. Indian flowers and Romantic Orientalism

4. Mental travellers: Banks, African exploration and the Romantic imagination

5. Banks, Bligh, and the breadfruit: slave plantations, tropical islands and the rhetoric of Romanticism

6. Exploration, headhunting and race theory: the skull beneath the skin

7. Theories of terrestrial magnetism and the search for the poles

Part II. British Science and Literature in the Context of Empire: 8. 'Man electrified man': Romantic revolution and the legacy of Benjamin Franklin

9. The beast within: vaccination, romanticism and the Jenneration of disease

10. Britain's little black boys and the technologies of benevolence

Conclusion.