Against Nature? Science and Oscar Wilde
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8071883 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Foster (0000-0002-2601-1539, corresponding author), John Wilson Foster |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 328-346 |
| Publication date | 1994-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | University of Toronto Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-0247 • E-ISSN: 1712-5278 |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/utq.63.2.328 |
| OpenAlex | W2012892724 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
Late and soon, W.B. Yeats identified science as a culprit standing in dangerous opposition to art and imagination. In 1897, in 'The Celtic Element in Literature,' he welcomed a widespread reaction 'against the rationalism of the eighteenth century' which was mingling 'with a reaction against the materialism of the nineteenth century,' a reaction he identified in literature as 'the symbolical movement.' In 1900, he told Shaw in debate that Shaw belonged 'to a bygone generation — to the scientific epoch — and was now "reactionary." Shaw was not amused. In 1921, the poet recalled his detestation of T.H. Huxley and the famous (Irish-born) physicist John Tyndall who had deprived him of 'the simple-minded religion' of his childhood. His 1934 essay, 'Louis Lambert,' put the nineteenth century's most famous scientist in the dock for 'what our instinct repudiates, Darwin's exaltation of accidental variations.' Given such sentiments, one detects approval in Yeats's 1936 remembrance of Lionel Johnson as a Rhymers' Club-man who asserted that 'science must be confined to the kitchen or the workshop, that it could discover nothing of importance
Art · Art history · Epistemology · Instinct · Irish · Literature · Materialism · Nothing · Opposition (politics · Reactionary · Vitalism · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Irish and British Studies · Modernist Literature and Criticism · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2018 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |