Victorian Network (ISSN 2042-616X) is a new online journal dedicated to publishing and promoting the best postgraduate work in Victorian Studies. The journal is guest edited by established scholars in the field and peer-reviewed by other doctoral students. The second issue, themed "Victorian Literature and Science" and guest edited by Dr Ian Henderson (King's College London), is now available (see below). You can also read the first issue, themed “The British Empire and Victorian Literature and Culture” and guest edited by Dr Muireann O'Cinneide (National University of Ireland, Galway), in the Archive.
The third issue of Victorian Network will take the form of conference proceedings for 'Crossing the Line: Affinities Before and After 1900', a postgraduate conference hosted by the University of Liverpool, 28-29 January 2010.
We are currently calling for papers for the fourth issue, themed "Theatricality and Performance in Victorian Literature and Culture". See here for more information.
Volume 2, Number 1 (Summer 2010)
Introduction: Victorian Literature and Science
Ian Henderson
(King's College London)
On 5 April 2010 the New York Times sponsored a debate in its online pages: 'Can "Neuro Lit Crit" Save the Humanities?'. The question rose from an earlier article in the same paper on the 'Next Big Thing in English' (31 March 2010), outlining work by (among others) Professor Linda Zunshine (University of Kentucky) which merges eighteenth-century literary studies and evolutionary psychology, referencing Professor Elaine Scarry's seminars on 'Cognitive Psychology and the Arts' at Harvard, and highlighting a project at Yale led by Emeritus Professor Michael Holquist which uses MRI scans to explore the mental functioning involved in reading complex texts. Behind these projects, it was claimed, there was recognition that
science not only offers unexpected insights into individual texts, but that it may help to answer fundamental questions about literature's very existence: Why do we read fiction? Why do we care so passionately about nonexistent characters? What underlying mental processes are activated when we read?
Science, apparently, could also 'prove' the advantages for cognitive development of reading literature (part of its 'saving' function; it makes literary study 'relevant' to mental health) and there followed the startling suggestion that literary history might make manifest psychological evolution in humans.
Naturally the framing of the article and subsequent question for debate prompted critical responses, ... Read the full text here
Table of Contents
Articles
| Introduction: Victorian Literature and Science | Abstract PDF |
| Ian Henderson |
| The 'Emerson Museum' and the Darwin Exhibit: Observation, Classification and Display in the Early Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin | Abstract PDF |
| Lauren F. Klein |
| Tennyson's Progressive Geology | Abstract PDF |
| E. E. Snyder |
| Beauty as a Terministic Screen in Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man | Abstract PDF |
| Kate Holterhoff |
| Where 'Things Go The Other Way': The Stereochemistry of Lewis Carroll's Looking-Glass World | Abstract PDF |
| Joanna Shawn Brigid O'Leary |
| The Aesthete as a Scientist: Walter Pater and Nineteenth-Century Science | Abstract PDF |
| Kanarakis Yannis |