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Aesthetic Evolution: Poetic Practice and Darwinian Theory in the Long Nineteenth Century

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Aesthetic Evolution: Poetic Practice and Darwinian Theory in the Long Nineteenth Century Aesthetic Evolution: Poetic Practice and Darwinian Theory in the Long Nineteenth Century by Jhoanna Infante-Abbatantuono A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Kevis Goodman, Chair Professor Ian Duncan Professor John Lesch Spring 2010 Aesthetic Evolution: Poetic Practice and Darwinian Theory in the Long Nineteenth Century © 2010 by Jhoanna Infante-Abbatantuono Abstract Aesthetic Evolution: Poetic Practice and Darwinian Theory in the Long Nineteenth Century by Jhoanna Infante-Abbatantuono Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Kevis Goodman, Chair This dissertation identifies the production of a theory of aesthetic evolution—a belief that the higher faculties of taste and sympathy emerged from the feelings of savages and animals—which resulted from the collaborations between evolutionary science and poetic theory and practice in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British writing. Even as the theory enabled authors to naturalize taste, sympathy, and social progress, it also permitted them to interrogate the category of the human and to unfold an immanent critique of the physical and psychic violence that attends modern development. Using Wordsworth’s influential definition of poetry not as metered verse but more broadly as the “history or science of feelings,” I find attempts to historicize and restore embodied sensibility in a variety of literary and non-literary texts, from Anna Barbauld’s anti-slavery verse and William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads to Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, as well as in a variety of genres, from Erasmus Darwin’s scientific poetry, to Charles Darwin’s popular voyage narrative, to the most lyrical of Thomas Hardy’s novels, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. In each chapter, I aim to understand not only particular texts but also the century-long investment in poetic practice by major British authors who linked natural and social history in diverse forms of writing. The first chapter explores the intersection between poetic practice, evolutionary theory, and political engagement in the anti-slavery verse of Erasmus Darwin and Anna Barbauld, who attempted in different ways to activate the reader’s organs of sympathy—the eye and hand—yet, in Barbauld’s case in particular, also acknowledged the limits of sympathy as a form of redress. Chapter Two reads some of Wordsworth’s best-known verse from Lyrical Ballads and The Prelude within the context of his engagement with the transmutationist writings of Erasmus Darwin and Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, in order to argue that Wordsworth’s proto-evolutionary poetry sought to advance human progress while also registering the costs of development and the threat of regression. Chapter Three argues that Charles Darwin made significant contributions to poetic practice and aesthetic philosophy throughout his career: his Journal of Researches promoted natural science as a discipline that inherits poetry’s function of humanizing readers, and his later Descent of Man posited that disinterested feeling and aesthetic judgment are products of evolutionary development. Like 1 other proponents of aesthetic evolution, however, the later Darwin also recognized that modern society degrades, as much as cultivates, human taste and sympathy. The final chapter follows this dialectic of aesthetic evolution into the fiction and poetry of Thomas Hardy. Aesthetic evolution and its immanent critique culminate in Hardy’s analysis of civilization’s return to savagery and ignorance in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and in his poetic practice, which incorporated scientific knowledge toward the “betterment” of the body and the restoration of sympathetic capacity. 2 For Francis i Table of Contents List of Abbreviations iii Acknowledgements v Introduction The “History or Science of Feelings” 1 Chapter One Evolution and Abolition: The Anti-Slavery Verse of Erasmus Darwin and Anna Barbauld 11 Chapter Two “Material Revolution”: Darwin, Buffon, and Wordsworth’s Proto-Evolutionary Poetics 32 Chapter Three Charles Darwin and the Natural History of Taste 68 Chapter Four Hardy’s Dialectic of Evolution 98 Bibliography 123 ii List of Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used in parenthetical citations throughout the dissertation. Autobiography Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882. Ed. Nora Barlow. London: Norton, 1969. Print. BG Darwin, Erasmus. The Botanic Garden; a Poem, in Two Parts. Part I. Containing the Economy of Vegetation. Part II. The Loves of the Plants. With Philosophical Notes. London: J. Johnson, 1791. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Web. 30 Jan. 2008. CPTH Hardy, Thomas. The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy. Ed. James Gibson. New York: Macmillan, 1976. Print. Enquiry Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. Adam Phillips. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print. EDRP King-Hele, Desmond. Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets. London: Macmillan, 1986. Print. Journal Darwin, Charles. Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World. London: John Murray, 1845. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. Ed. John van Whye. Web. 15 Nov. 2008. LB Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. Ed. W. J. B. Owen. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969. Print. LED Darwin, Erasmus. The Letters of Erasmus Darwin. Ed. Desmond King- Hele. New York: Cambridge UP, 1981. Print. LEY Wordsworth, William, and Dorothy Wordsworth. The Early Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth (1787-1805). Ed. Ernest De Selincourt. Oxford: Clarendon, 1935. Print. LP Darwin, Erasmus. The Botanic Garden; a Poem, in Two Parts. Part I. Containing the Economy of Vegetation. Part II. The Loves of the Plants. With Philosophical Notes. London: J. Johnson, 1791. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Web. 30 Jan. 2008. LWTH Hardy, Thomas, Michael Millgate, and Florence Emily Hardy. The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1985. Print. iii Notebooks Darwin, Charles. Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836-1844: Geology, Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries. Eds. Paul H. Barrett, Peter J. Gautrey and Sandra Herbert. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987. Print. Origin Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species: A Fascimile of the First Edition. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1964. Print. Prel. Wordsworth, William. The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850. Eds. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams and Stephen Gill. New York: Norton, 1979. Print. (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from the 1805 Prelude.) STC Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Samuel Taylor Coleridge; The Oxford Authors. Ed. H. J. Jackson. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print. Tess Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Eds. Ross C. Murfin and John Paul Riquelme. New York: Bedford, 1998. Print. TN Darwin, Erasmus. The Golden Age; the Temple of Nature or, the Origin of Society. Ed. Donald H. Reiman. New York: Garland, 1978. Print. WWP Wordsworth, William. The Prose Works of William Wordsworth. Eds. W. J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974. Print. Zoo. Darwin, Erasmus. Zoonomia; or, the Laws of Organic Life. 1794-96. Vol. 1. London: J. Johnson, 1794-96. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Web. 18 Aug. 2008. 2 vols. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation never would have been completed without many years of support from its director, Kevis Goodman. With brilliance and kindness, she encouraged the project’s organic development, helping me to prune overgrowths and to develop multiple directions of thought. I will always be grateful for her generosity and friendship. A second mentor, Ian Duncan, has lent his vast knowledge to this project; his suggestions for research and revision have helped me in my attempt to bridge large distances between literary-historical periods and between Darwins. Thanks also to Jack Lesch from the History of Science, who graciously signed on to a project seemingly far from his own field. I was lucky to attend graduate school at UC Berkeley, which attracts so many smart and generous people. I am particularly grateful to have received comments on chapter drafts from Kea Anderson, Kristin Fujie, and Karen Leibowitz, and (on fewer but no less important occasions) from Sophia Wang, Kelvin Black, Monica Soare, Slavica Naumovska, Catherine Sprecher Loverti, Austin Grossman, Kara Wittman, Amanda Goldstein, Lily Gurton-Wachter, Ian Thomas-Bignami, Josh Weiner, and Marques Redd. Beyond my committee, a number of English faculty members have supported this dissertation and my career; these kind people include Marcial González, Joanna Picciotto, Colleen Lye, Dorri Beam, and Kamilla Elliott. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge that the University’s Graduate Diversity Program provided me with a fellowship during two years of coursework and one of dissertation writing. v Introduction The “History or Science of Feelings” All the higher processes of evolution are necessarily so complex in character that we can really deal with only a single aspect at a time. Hence, in spite of the rather general title which this paper bears, it proposes to treat of aesthetic evolution in man under one such aspect only—that of its gradual decentralization, its increase in disinterestedness from the simple and narrow feelings
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