‘In from the periphery’? : Re-framing the reach of the nineteenth-century French literary-scientific imagination
Abstract
By investigating what it calls the literary-scientific imagination, this article refocuses critical attention towards new nineteenth-century French scientific knowledge in texts outside the realist “canon”. Chateaubriand’s Atala (1801) reveals French natural scientific nomenclatures illuminating significant, non-Western, knowledge. Scientific discovery in “provincial” France proves discipline- and genre-defining in Adrien Cranile’s little-studied Solutré (1872). Sand’s fantastical-dystopian Laura ou Voyage dans le Cristal (1864) demonstrates important re-educational review of imperial scientific progress. The shared peripheral visions, effets de l’irréel and critical-creative scientific possibility of these indicative texts demonstrate the richness of the (nineteenth-century) French literary-scientific imagination for onward study.
Citation
Orr , M 2022 , ' ‘In from the periphery’? Re-framing the reach of the nineteenth-century French literary-scientific imagination ' , Dix-Neuf , vol. 25 , no. 3-4 , pp. 280-299 . https://doi.org/10.1080/14787318.2021.2017571
Publication
Dix-Neuf
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1478-7318Type
Journal article
Collections
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