Życie i nauki o życiu w literaturze francuskiej i polskiej XIX wieku. Studia
Life and Life Sciences in 19th century French and Polish Literature. Studies

Author(s): Gisèle Séginger , Barbara Łuczak, Mirosław Loba
Subject(s): History, Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Modern Age, French Literature, Polish Literature, 19th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: life; scientific imagination; interactions between literature and natural sciences; 19th century Polish poetry, 19th century French literature; Dyzma Bończa Tomaszewski; Honoré de Balzac
Summary/Abstract: This book takes a historical look at the relationship between French and Polish literature and the natural sciences in the nineteenth century. The three studies present the shift in the scientific paradigm that occurred at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they also show the impact this shift had on literary practice in Poland and France. The works prove that modern literature entered into a dialogue with natural sciences, which had been undergoing extremely intensive development since the mid-eighteenth century: botany, zoology, physiology, and later biology became an attractive source for the literary imagination and contributed to a new reading of the classical relations between nature and culture. For the authors whose works are discussed in the following chapters (including Jules Michelet, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac and Dyzma Bończa-Tomaszewski), knowledge of nature makes it possible to reread the history of cultures, states and civilizations, to describe contemporary reality and diagnose its characteristic phenomena, and even to envision the future. It also allows us to see what is common to humans, animals and plants.

• Details
• Contents