Book contents
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Natural History, the Theology of Nature, and the Novel
- Chapter 1 Reverent Natural History, the Sketch, and the Novel: Modes of English Realism in White, Mitford, and Austen
- Chapter 2 Early Victorian Natural History: Reverent Empiricism and the Aesthetic of the Commonplace
- Chapter 3 The Formal Realism of Reverent Natural History: Tide-pools, Aquaria, and the Seashore Natural Histories of P. H. Gosse and G. H. Lewes
- Chapter 4 Reverence at the Seashore: Seashore Natural History, Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago (1857), and Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature (1855)
- Chapter 5 Seeing the Divine in the Commonplace: George Eliot’s Paranaturalist Realism (1856–1859)
- Chapter 6 Elizabeth Gaskell’s Everyday: Reverent Form and Natural Theology in Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) and Wives and Daughters (1866)
- Epilogue Barsetshire via Selborne: Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Chapter 3 - The Formal Realism of Reverent Natural History: Tide-pools, Aquaria, and the Seashore Natural Histories of P. H. Gosse and G. H. Lewes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2019
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Natural History, the Theology of Nature, and the Novel
- Chapter 1 Reverent Natural History, the Sketch, and the Novel: Modes of English Realism in White, Mitford, and Austen
- Chapter 2 Early Victorian Natural History: Reverent Empiricism and the Aesthetic of the Commonplace
- Chapter 3 The Formal Realism of Reverent Natural History: Tide-pools, Aquaria, and the Seashore Natural Histories of P. H. Gosse and G. H. Lewes
- Chapter 4 Reverence at the Seashore: Seashore Natural History, Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago (1857), and Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature (1855)
- Chapter 5 Seeing the Divine in the Commonplace: George Eliot’s Paranaturalist Realism (1856–1859)
- Chapter 6 Elizabeth Gaskell’s Everyday: Reverent Form and Natural Theology in Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) and Wives and Daughters (1866)
- Epilogue Barsetshire via Selborne: Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
Chapter 3 examines the formal realism of “reverent natural history,” describing the formal properties of natural histories in ways that we have assumed were the sole province of the realist novel’s descriptive operations. The focus is on P. H.Gosse’s seashore trilogy, including A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast, The Aquarium, and Tenby. These formal properties include: the prevalence of detail that the inductive process and theological orientation that the texts encourage; the quality of dilation as a function of reverence; and how detail, dilation, and minuteness are formal and thematic attributes of these natural histories, which reflect a religiosity that goes beyond the overt references to design arguments. The chapter’s second half focuses on two natural environments of the seashore naturalist: the aquarium and the tide-pool. These environments are read as literary figures, as heightened sites of metonymic display.
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- The Divine in the CommonplaceReverent Natural History and the Novel in Britain, pp. 112 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019