Chaos and Cosmos : : Literary Roots of Modern Ecology in the British Nineteenth Century / / Heidi C. M. Scott.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Scott, Heidi C. M.,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)

In Chaos and Cosmos, Heidi Scott integrates literary readings with contemporary ecological methods to investigate two essential and contrasting paradigms of nature that scientific ecology continues to debate: chaos and balance. Ecological literature of the Romantic and Victorian eras uses environmental chaos and the figure of the balanced microcosm as tropes essential to understanding natural patterns, and these eras were the first to reflect upon the ecological degradations of the Industrial Revolution. Chaos and Cosmos contends that the seed of imagination that would enable a scientist to study a lake as a microcosmic world at the formal, empirical level was sown by Romantic and Victorian poets who consciously drew a sphere around their perceptions in order to make sense of spots of time and place amid the globalizing modern world. This study's interest goes beyond likening literary tropes to scientific aesthetics; it aims to theorize the interdisciplinary history of the concepts that underlie our scientific understanding of modern nature. Paradigmatic ecological ideas such as ecosystems, succession dynamics, punctuated equilibrium, and climate change are shown to have a literary foundation that preceded their status as theories in science. This book represents an elevation of the prospects of ecocriticism toward fully developed interdisciplinary potentials of literary ecology.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Beyond the Dichotomy -- PART 1 Chaos -- 1 Romantic Chaos: Natural Patterns Disturbed -- 2 Victorian Chaos: Industrial Disruptions -- 3 Today's Science Nonfiction -- PART 2 Microcosm -- 4 Romantic Microcosms: Brain Worlds -- 5 Victorian Microcosms: Domestic Systems -- 6 Today's Scientific Modeling -- PART 3 Keats and Ecology: A Case Study -- 7 The Literary Empiricist -- 8 Hyperion: The Chaos of Tartarus -- 9 Microcosmic Odes -- Epilogue -- Works Consulted -- Index