When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he unwittingly and probably unintentionally changed the face of Victorian literature and all literature after it. Presumably, his groundbreaking work of evolutionary biology created a caesura in English literary history that fundamentally changed literature’s ‘beliefs’ in more ways than one. However, literature’s engagement with humanity as a product of not necessarily a benign omnipotent creator begins much earlier in the 19^th century and we will take a closer look at novels that predate Darwin’s publication, too. We will consider how the idea that human beings are in fact not the Christian Crown of Creation changes conventional plots, but, more importantly, changes the conception of character with tremendous effects for literature to this day. Literature’s general affinity for the sciences begins in the 19^th century and we will consider novels from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) to trace not just Darwin’s influence, but also the emergent structures of feeling arising long before his pivotal publication.

Kurs im HIS-LSF