Titre :

Poetry, Fossils, and the Flesh of Time in Erasmus Darwin’s The Temple of Nature

Auteur(s) :

Musitelli-Laniel, Sophie [Auteur]
Institut universitaire de France [IUF]
Centre d'Études en Civilisations, Langues et Lettres Étrangères - ULR 4074 [CECILLE]

Titre de la revue :

Etudes Anglaises

Pagination :

83-96

Éditeur :

Klincksieck

Date de publication :

2019-04-30

ISSN :

0014-195X

Mot(s)-clé(s) en anglais :

Poetry
Erasmus Darwin
Evolution
Biology

Discipline(s) HAL :

Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Littératures
Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Résumé en anglais : [en]

When he looked at fossilised sea-shells, the poet and naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) read the gradual transformation of species through “millions of ages” in their “glossy volumes.” In his poetry, fossilised shells ...
Lire la suite >When he looked at fossilised sea-shells, the poet and naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) read the gradual transformation of species through “millions of ages” in their “glossy volumes.” In his poetry, fossilised shells look like strange artefacts no one crafted: the original organism acts either as the mould or as the raw material of the fossil emerging out of it, as if sculpted by time from the inside. The genesis of life-forms seems to take place outside divine intervention, through a series of negligible transformations: the imperceptible substitutes itself for the Unseen. In these beautiful forms, carved by death, time generates artistic forms. Destruction writes itself into a narrative of creation, and as the work of time becomes legible in the forms of the fossil, time fleshes itself out.Lire moins >

Langue :

Anglais

Vulgarisation :

Non

Collections :

• Centre d'Études en Civilisations Langues et Lettres Étrangères (CECILLE) - ULR 4074

Source :

Harvested from HAL