{"product_id":"human-forms-ian-duncan-9780691264783","title":"Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of Evolution","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA major rethinking of the European novel and its relationship to early evolutionary science\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe 120 years between Henry Fielding's \u003ci\u003eTom Jones\u003c\/i\u003e (1749) and George Eliot's \u003ci\u003eMiddlemarch\u003c\/i\u003e (1871) marked both the rise of the novel and the shift from the presumption of a stable, universal human nature to one that changes over time. In \u003ci\u003eHuman Forms\u003c\/i\u003e, Ian Duncan reorients our understanding of the novel's formation during its cultural ascendancy, arguing that fiction produced new knowledge in a period characterized by the interplay between literary and scientific discourses--even as the two were separating into distinct domains. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDuncan focuses on several crisis points: the contentious formation of a natural history of the human species in the late Enlightenment; the emergence of new genres such as the Romantic bildungsroman; historical novels by Walter Scott and Victor Hugo that confronted the dissolution of the idea of a fixed human nature; Charles Dickens's transformist aesthetic and its challenge to Victorian realism; and George Eliot's reckoning with the nineteenth-century revolutions in the human and natural sciences. Modeling the modern scientific conception of a developmental human nature, the novel became a major experimental instrument for managing the new set of divisions--between nature and history, individual and species, human and biological life--that replaced the ancient schism between animal body and immortal soul. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe first book to explore the interaction of European fiction with \"the natural history of man\" from the late Enlightenment through the mid-Victorian era, \u003ci\u003eHuman Forms\u003c\/i\u003e sets a new standard for work on natural history and the novel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Ian Duncan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0691264783\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780691264783\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Princeton University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/17\/2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 304\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.06lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.70d","brand":"Ian Duncan","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46372622434559,"sku":"9780691264783","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_3db83476-6ce1-48fb-a071-684d0ca9e5be.jpg?v=1732726482","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/human-forms-ian-duncan-9780691264783","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}