Parable, Professionalisation and Literary Allusion in Victorian Scientific Writing

Victorian scientific writing frequently invokes literary allusion or knits parable into argument. What were the functions of these invocations? What light can they throw on the social, ethical, intellectual and even economic conditions of Victorian science? And how do they relate to the processes of professionalisation? Language is a large institution. Within it diverse groups define their identities. The major debate among Victorian language-theorists in the 1860s and 70s concerned whether language was to be understood as organic and evolutionary or interactive and institutional. Nowhere in the course of that debate was the ideal of 'the mothertongue' disputed. Victorian people took it for granted that they shared, and should share, a common tongue, and that scientists must aim to write in an accessible style for a diversified readership

Allusion · Art · Literature · Sociology · History · History of Science and Natural History · Publishing and Scholarly Communication

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