Bloom
The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel
Published on 12. July 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
276 pages
978-0-19-533909-3 (ISBN)
Description
Starting from the botanical craze inspired by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, and exploring the variations it spawned - natural history, landscape architecture, polemical battles over botany's prurience - this study offers a fresh, detailed reading of the courtship novel from Jane Austen to George Eliot and Henry James. By reanimating a cultural understanding of botany and sexuality that we have lost, it provides an entirely new and powerful account of the novel's role in scripting sexualised courtship, and illuminates how the novel and popular science together created a cultural figure, the blooming girl, that stood at the centre of both fictional and scientific worlds.
Reviews / Votes
The intricate cultural web linking nature, flowers, sex and marriage with the English novel is clearly drawn and persuasively developed...Bloom combines meticulous attention to the details of cultural history and vigorous readings of nineteenth-century fiction with the breathless excitement of someone who has stumbled upon a story never previously told. * TLS * A fascinating and unique thesis...The volume represents a significant and meticulously documented contribution to the study of the interrelations between 19th-century science and literature. * Choice * By bringing together human courtships and botanical systems, King persuasively demonstrates how writers were able to imbue fiction with sexuality, while still remaining perfectly decorous... This is a study that not only illuminates how courtship narratives can be replete with sexual reference and yet still 'respectable', but also perfectly demonstrates how the tracing of the implications of just one highly charged word brings out the inseparability of scientific and literary cultures. * Studies in English Literature 1500 - 1900 *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
452 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-533909-3 (9780195339093)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Content
Introduction: The Girl and the Water Lily
Chapter 1: Linnaeus's Blooms: The Birth of the Botanical Vernacular
The Rise of Botanical Culture
The Mechanics of the Botanical Vernacular
Botanical Mimetics and the Novel
The Eighteenth Century: Occluded Blooms
Towards the Nineteenth Century: The Bloom Narrative
Chapter 2: Imaginative Literature and the Politics of Botany
Botany's Gendered Controversies
Botanical Modesty: Edgeworth's Belinda
Botanical Poetry: Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin
Chapter 3: Austen's Physicalized Mimesis: Garden, Landscape, Marriageable Girl
Lovers Walk: Burney's Evelina and Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Improving Grounds, Improving Complexions
Bloom: Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion
Chapter 4: Eliot's Vernaculars: Natural Objects and Revisionary Blooms
Ossification: Mid-Century Bloom in Dickens
Revivification: Mid-Century Bloom in Middlemarch and Adam Bede
Organic Realism: Eliot and Natural History
Chapter 5: Inside and Outside the Plot: Rewriting the Bloom Script in James
The Critic and Bloom
The Girl as Topic: Watch and Ward and The Awkward Age
A Blooming Consciousness: The Portrait of a Lady
Bloom's Decadence: The Wings of the Dove and The Picture of Dorian Gray
Coda: Later Bloomings: Molly's Bloom
Notes
Chapter 1: Linnaeus's Blooms: The Birth of the Botanical Vernacular
The Rise of Botanical Culture
The Mechanics of the Botanical Vernacular
Botanical Mimetics and the Novel
The Eighteenth Century: Occluded Blooms
Towards the Nineteenth Century: The Bloom Narrative
Chapter 2: Imaginative Literature and the Politics of Botany
Botany's Gendered Controversies
Botanical Modesty: Edgeworth's Belinda
Botanical Poetry: Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin
Chapter 3: Austen's Physicalized Mimesis: Garden, Landscape, Marriageable Girl
Lovers Walk: Burney's Evelina and Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Improving Grounds, Improving Complexions
Bloom: Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion
Chapter 4: Eliot's Vernaculars: Natural Objects and Revisionary Blooms
Ossification: Mid-Century Bloom in Dickens
Revivification: Mid-Century Bloom in Middlemarch and Adam Bede
Organic Realism: Eliot and Natural History
Chapter 5: Inside and Outside the Plot: Rewriting the Bloom Script in James
The Critic and Bloom
The Girl as Topic: Watch and Ward and The Awkward Age
A Blooming Consciousness: The Portrait of a Lady
Bloom's Decadence: The Wings of the Dove and The Picture of Dorian Gray
Coda: Later Bloomings: Molly's Bloom
Notes