Poetry and Parallax in Mary Somerville's on the Connexion of the Physical Sciences
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12411069 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michelle Boswell (Thomas Jefferson School of Law, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 727-744 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150317000183 |
| OpenAlex | W2767444523 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 13 |
During the first astronomy lesson shared by the two protagonists of Thomas Hardy's Two on a Tower (1882), Lady Viviette Constantine and Swithin St Cleeve share a decidedly gloomy interpretation of human insignificance in the face of a vast universe: “We are now traversing distances beside which the immense line stretching from the earth to the sun is but an invisible point,” said the youth. “When, just now, we had reached a planet whose remoteness is a hundred times the remoteness of the sun from the earth, we were only a two thousandth part of the journey to the spot at which we have optically arrived now.” “Oh, pray don't; it overpowers me!” she replied, not without seriousness. “It makes me feel that it is not worth while to live; it quite annihilates me.” “If it annihilates your ladyship to roam over these yawning spaces just once, think how it must annihilate me to be, as it were, in constant suspension amid them night after night.” (28-29; ch. 4)
Antipodes · Art · Art history · Astronomy · Insignificance · Literature · Physics · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Seriousness · Shadow (psychology · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophy · Psychology · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |