Essay Review: Darwin and George Eliot: Plotting and Organicism: Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin,George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction,George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning

Beer Gillian , Darwin's plots: Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth-century fiction (London, 1983), 7.

Shuttleworth Sally , George Eliot and nineteenth-century science: The make-believe of a beginning (Cambridge, 1984), p. ix.

Jordanova L. J. , “Romantic science? Michelet, morals and nature”, The British journal for the history of science, xiii (1980), 44–49, p. 49.

Lovejoy Arthur O. , The great chain of being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936). For a critique of Lovejoy's approach to the history of ideas see Bresdorff Thomas , “Lovejoy's idea of ‘idea’”, New literary history, viii (1976–77), 195–211.

On texts and textuality see Barthes Roland , “From work to text” in Image-music-text: Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath (London, 1977), 155–64; Ricœur Paul , “What is a text? Explanation and understanding” and “The model of the text: Meaningful action considered as a text”, in Thompson John B. (ed.), Paul Ricœur: Hermeneutics and the human sciences. Essays on language, action and interpretation (Cambridge, 1981), 145–64, 197–221.

Hyman Stanley Edgar , The tangled bank: Darwin, Marx, Eraser as imaginative writers (New York, 1962). For the limitations of Hyman's book see Culler A. Dwight , “The Darwinian revolution and literary form”, in Levine George and Madden William (eds), The art of Victorian prose (New York, 1968), 225.

Peckham Morse , “Darwinism and Darwinisticism”, Victorian studies, iii (1959–60), 21–29.

Gibbons Tom , Rooms in the Darwin hotel: Studies in English literary criticism and ideas, 1880–1920 ( Nedlands Australia W. , 1973), pp. ix, 2–4.

Bannister Robert C. , Social Darwinism: Science and myth in Anglo-American social thought (Philadelphia, 1979); Greta Jones, Social Darwinism and English thought: The interaction between biological and social theory (Brighton, 1980).

See especially Bannister , Social Darwinism , 9–10, 14–16, 24–29; Jones , Social Darwinism and English thought, 74–75, 221–3, 136–8, 143–7.

Durant John R. , “The meaning of evolution” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1978), 9, 14n. 27, 271–4.

Moore James R. , The post-Darwinian controversies: A study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America (Cambridge, 1979), 14–15, 114–15.

Paul Harry W. , The edge of contingency: French Catholic reaction to scientific change from Darwin to Duhem (Gainesville, Florida, 1979); Kelly Alfred , The descent of Darwin: The popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860–1914 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981).

Glisserman Susan , “Early Victorian science writers and Tennyson's ‘In Memoriam’: A study in cultural exchange”, Victorian studies, xviii (1975), 278–81; Young Robert M. , “The historiographic and ideological contexts of the nineteenth century debate on man's place in nature”, in Teich M. and Young Robert M. (eds), Changing perspectives in the history of science (London, 1973), 344–438, and “Natural theology, Victorian periodicals and the fragmentation of a common context”, in Chant Colin and Fauvel John (eds), Darwin to Einstein: Historical studies on science and belief (Harlow, 1980), 69–106; Manier Edward , The young Darwin and his cultural circle (Dordrecht and Boston, 1978); Gillespie Neal C. , Charles Darwin and the problem of creation (Chicago and London, 1979).

Beer , Darwin's plots , 7; Bloom Harold , The anxiety of influence: A theory of poetry (New York and London, 1973), and A map of misreading (New York and London, 1975).

Beer , Darwin's plots, 44–45.

Darwin Charles , The origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life , Pelican edn, ed. by Burrow J. W. (Harmondsworth, 1968). 114–15, cited Beer , Darwin's plots, 45.

Beer , Darwin's plots, 46.

ibid., 9, 16.

White Hayden , “The fictions of factual representation”, in Fletcher A. (ed.), The literature of fact (New York, 1976), 38; cf. Beer , Darwin's plots, 54–55, 271.

Beer , Darwin's plots, 96; Young Robert M. , “Darwin's metaphor: Does nature select?”, The monist, lv (1971), 442–503; Gruber Howard D. , “The evolving systems approach to creative scientific work: Charles Darwin's early thought”, in Nickles T. (ed.), Scientific discovery: Case histories (Boston and Dordrecht, 1980), 113–30.

Beer , Darwin's plots, 114, 115.

Ibid ., 53–54, 88; Young , Darwin's metaphor (ref. 21), 468–71; Gillespie , op. cit. (ref. 14), 82–88.

Beer , Darwin's plots, 18, 88–89; [ Chambers Robert ], Vestiges of the natural history of creation (London, 1844), 1.

Beer , Darwin's plots , 97, cf. 55.

ibid., 10.

Barthes Roland , Pleasure of the text (London, 1976), 6, 13–14, 31.

Barthes Roland , Sade, Fourier, Loyola (New York, 1976), 3; cf. Beer , Darwin's plots, 36–37.

Cited Beer , Darwin's plots, 245.

Beer Gillian , “Plot and the analogy with science in later nineteenth-century novelists”, Comparative criticism, ii (1980), 131–50.

For formalist theories of plotting see Erlich Victor , Russian formalism: History-doctrine , 2nd rev. edn (The Hague, 1965); Jameson Frederic , The prison-house of language: A critical account of structuralism and Russian formalism (Princeton, 1972).

Beer , Darwin's plots, 51. See also Ricœur Paul and Tiffenau Dorian (eds), La narrativité (Paris, 1983) for narratives and “narrativity”.

Beer , Darwin's plots, 99.

ibid., 107.

ibid., 111.

ibid., 114.

Cf. Gibson Walker , “Behind the veil: A distinction between poetic and scientific language in Tennyson, Lyell and Darwin”, Victorian studies, ii (1958), 60–68; Cannon Walter F. , “Darwin's vision in On the origin of species”, in Levine and Madden , op. cit. (ref. 6); Williams Carolyn , “Natural selection and narrative form in The egoist”, Victorian studies, xxvii (1983–84), 53–79.

Beer , Darwin's plots, 150–1.

ibid., 55.

ibid., 186.

ibid., 221.

Shuttleworth , op. cit. (ref. 2), 176–7.

ibid., p. ix.

Ritterbush Philip C. , “Organic form: Aesthetics and objectivity in the study of form in the life sciences”, in Rousseau G. S. (ed.), Organic form: The life of an idea (London, 1972), 52.

Shuttleworth , op. cit. (ref. 2), p. ix.

ibid., 200. For Eliot and Lewes see also Levine George , “George Eliot's hypothesis of reality”, Nineteenth-century fiction, xxxv (1980–81), 1–28.

ibid., p. xii.

Eagleton Terry , Criticism and ideology: A study in Marxist literary theory (London, 1976), 102–3. Cf. Abrams M. H. , The mirror and the lamp (London, 1953); Wimsatt William K. , “Organic form: Some questions about a metaphor”, in Rousseau (ed.), Organic form (ref. 44), 61–81.

Eagleton , Criticism and ideology, 121.

Shuttleworth , op. cit. (ref. 2), p. xiv.

ibid., 188, 199.

Myers William , The leaching of George Eliot (Leicester, 1984), 153, 131.

Young in Chant and Fauvel , Darwin to Einstein (ref. 16), 74–75.

Harrison Frederic , Autobiographic memoirs (2 vols, London, 1911), ii, 108.