The Starry Sky Within Astronomy and the Reach of the Mind in Victorian Literature
The Starry Sky Within Astronomy and the Reach of the Mind in Victorian Literature
- ISBN 13:
9780199686964
- ISBN 10:
0199686963
- Format: Hardcover
- Copyright: 03/09/2014
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
List Price $165.33 Save
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Summary
In this innovative study, Henchman shows that the reconceptualization of the skies gave poets and novelists new spaces in which to indulge their longing to escape the limitations of individual perspective. She links astronomy and optics to the form of the multiplot novel, with its many centers of consciousness, complex systems of relation, and criss-crossing points of view. Accounts of a world and a subject both in relative motion shaped the form of grand-scale narratives such as Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Bleak House, and Daniel Deronda. De Quincey, Tennyson, and Eliot befriended leading astronomers and visited observatories, while Hardy learned about astronomy from the vast popular literature of the day. These writers use cosmic distances to dislodge their readers from the earth, setting human perception against views from high above and then telescoping back to earth again. What results is a new perception of the mobility of point of view in both literature and science.