Mechanism and the Novel
Science in the Narrative Process

An important 1993 study of the relationship between British fiction and the tradition of mechanistic science.

Martha A. Turner (Author)

9780521108966, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 February 2009

212 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.32 kg

"Turner's book is enjoyable to read, and offers many useful, thought-provoking readings of texts..." Victorian Studies

Martha Turner's 1993 book examines the relationship between British fiction and the tradition of mechanistic science derived from Isaac Newton, and provides a bridge between the mechanical philosophy of the eighteenth century and present-day habits of thought. Tracing the evolution of the concept of mechanism among science writers and novelists of the past 200 years, it shows how the pre-mechanistic world of Pride and Prejudice and the relatively unproblematic empiricism of The Bride of Lammermoor were succeeded by the quandaries of Bleak House, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, and The Egoist, and how alternatives to the mechanistic tradition were worked out in The Secret Agent and Women in Love. Analysis of Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives identifies features of the tradition which still survive.

Introduction
1. The concept of mechanism
2. The Aristotelian logic of settlement in Austen's Pride and Prejudice
3. Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor: empiricism, mechanism, imagination
4. Cosmology and chaos in Dickens's Bleak House
5. Scientific humanism and the comic spirit: from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel to The Egoist
6. Old mindsets and new world-music in Conrad's The Secret Agent
7. Women in Love: beyond fulfilment
8. The mechanistic legacy: Lessing's Canopus in Argos: archives.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]