{"title":"Rewriting the Empire of the Imagination: The Post-Imperial Gothic Fiction of Peter Carey and A.S. Byatt","authors":"K. Renk","doi":"10.1177/0021989404044736","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"She suggests the narrow line between magic and science that mesmerized the Victorians. Victorians dabbled in occult practices, such as telepathy, séances and mesmerism, even while they struggled to accept Darwinian science and its earthly ramifications. They also practised spiritualism while the Empire magically spread itself around the globe. Victorian anthropologist Andrew Lang’s explanation of the relationship between empire and the occult casts light on the period’s wedding of science and pseudo-science: ‘‘As the visible world is measured, mapped, tested, weighed, we seem to hope more and more that a world of invisible romance may not be far from us’’. Lang implies that as the British reached the limits of exploration, after they had weighed, mapped, and claimed as their own more than their share of the globe, the only frontier left to explore and map was the invisible world.","PeriodicalId":44714,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2004-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0021989404044736","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989404044736","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
She suggests the narrow line between magic and science that mesmerized the Victorians. Victorians dabbled in occult practices, such as telepathy, séances and mesmerism, even while they struggled to accept Darwinian science and its earthly ramifications. They also practised spiritualism while the Empire magically spread itself around the globe. Victorian anthropologist Andrew Lang’s explanation of the relationship between empire and the occult casts light on the period’s wedding of science and pseudo-science: ‘‘As the visible world is measured, mapped, tested, weighed, we seem to hope more and more that a world of invisible romance may not be far from us’’. Lang implies that as the British reached the limits of exploration, after they had weighed, mapped, and claimed as their own more than their share of the globe, the only frontier left to explore and map was the invisible world.
期刊介绍:
"The Journal of Commonwealth Literature has long established itself as an invaluable resource and guide for scholars in the overlapping fields of commonwealth Literature, Postcolonial Literature and New Literatures in English. The journal is an institution, a household word and, most of all, a living, working companion." Edward Baugh The Journal of Commonwealth Literature is internationally recognized as the leading critical and bibliographic forum in the field of Commonwealth and postcolonial literatures. It provides an essential, peer-reveiwed, reference tool for scholars, researchers, and information scientists. Three of the four issues each year bring together the latest critical comment on all aspects of ‘Commonwealth’ and postcolonial literature and related areas, such as postcolonial theory, translation studies, and colonial discourse. The fourth issue provides a comprehensive bibliography of publications in the field