Mitchell Experimental Life

Vitalism in Romantic Science and Literature
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4214-1089-0
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Experimental Life establishes the multiple ways in which Romantic authors appropriated the notion of experimentation from the natural sciences.

Winner of the Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, BSLS Book Prize of the British Society for Literature and Science

If the objective of the Romantic movement was nothing less than to redefine the meaning of life itself, what role did experiments play in this movement? While earlier scholarship has established both the importance of science generally and vitalism specifically, with regard to Romanticism no study has investigated what it meant for artists to experiment and how those experiments related to their interest in the concept of life.

Experimental Life draws on approaches and ideas from contemporary science studies, proposing the concept of experimental vitalism to show both how Romantic authors appropriated the concept of experimentation from the sciences and the impact of their appropriation on post-Romantic concepts of literature and art.

Robert Mitchell navigates complex conceptual arenas such as network theory, gift exchange, paranoia, and biomedia and introduces new concepts, such as cryptogamia, chylopoietic discourse, trance-plantation, and the poetics of suspension. As a result, Experimental Life is a wide-ranging summation and extension of the current state of literary studies, the history of science, cultural critique, and theory.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mitchell, Robert

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Semiotik
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Aknowledgments
Introduction: Three Eras of Experimental Vitalism
1. Romanticism, Art, and Experiments
2. Suspended Animation and the Poetics of Trance
3. Life, Orientation, and Abandoned Experiments
4. Nausea, Digestion, and the Collapsurgence of System
5. The Media of Life
6. Cryptogamia
Conclusion: Biopolitics and Experimental Vitalism
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mitchell, Robert
Robert Mitchell is a professor of English and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory at Duke University. He is author of Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era: Systems, State Finance, and the Shadows of Futurity.

Robert Mitchell is a professor of English and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory at Duke University. He is author of Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era: Systems, State Finance, and the Shadows of Futurity.