In one of the great essays on literature and science, Stephen Jay Gould (2002: 51) suggests that Vladimir Nabokov’s rare abilities in both fiction and entomology stemmed from his knack for observation, which revealed “deep similarities in intellectual procedure between the arts and sciences.” Henry James’s (1972: 35) advice to would-be writers—“be one of the people on whom nothing is lost”—would thus apply as well to biologists. This attentiveness was obvious to Julian Huxley, biologist brother of Aldous, who extols the scientific value of observation in “Bird-Watching and Biological Science” (1916). Observation, he argues, involves more than perceiving and recording data: it cuts to the heart of scientific inquiry: “Those who wish to penetrate into those arcana and mysteries of science where the beginnings of Consciousness are being shaped and added to Life cannot do better than observe the behavior of a single species of wild bird or...
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Review Article|
June 01 2020
Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and British Modernism, by Caroline Hovanec
Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and British Modernism
, by Hovanec, Caroline. New York
: Cambridge University Press
, 2018
. 225
pages.
Daniel Aureliano Newman
Daniel Aureliano Newman
Daniel Aureliano Newman is assistant professor (teaching stream) in the Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto. His research on literature, narrative theory and science has appeared in Twentieth-Century Literature, Style, Journal of Narrative Theory, Configurations, and other journals, as well as in his book Modernist Life Histories: Biological Theory and the Experimental Bildungsroman. His scientific articles are published in Oikos and American Journal of Botany.
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Twentieth-Century Literature (2020) 66 (2): 265–272.
Citation
Daniel Aureliano Newman; Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and British Modernism, by Caroline Hovanec. Twentieth-Century Literature 1 June 2020; 66 (2): 265–272. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-8536187
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