Geological Katabasis : Geology and the Christian Underworld in Kingsley's The Water-Babies

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-209
Author(s):  
Rachel Fountain Eames
Keyword(s):  
Earth Science ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Geological Society

Charles Kingsley's lifelong interest in geology is well documented – from the gentleman geologists of his early novels and his membership of the Geological Society, to his introduction to earth science for children, Madam How and Lady Why (1870) – but the influence of geological ideas in The Water-Babies (1863) has been largely overlooked. Instead, academics have broadly categorised the novel as an ‘evolutionary parable’, emphasising Darwinian influences to the exclusion of contemporary geology. I propose that there is a distinct geological subtext underpinning The Water-Babies. Acknowledging both its scientific and religious contexts, I argue that Kingsley integrates elements of his geological studies into clear stratigraphic forms in the novel; that these ideas recur in the novel's surface geography and are informed by his reading of contemporary geologists; and that The Water-Babies is part of a longstanding generic tradition of Christian geological katabasis that can be traced back to Dante's Divine Comedy (1555).

scholarly journals In the center of a circle: poetics of space in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and H. Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick, or The Whale”

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Anna Viktorovna Dulina
Keyword(s):  
Herman Melville ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
The Impact

This article is dedicated to the analysis of peculiarities of space arrangement in the “Divine Comedy” by Alighieri and the novel Moby-Dick, or The Whale” by Herman Melville. On the examples of structural mythologemes “journey inside yourself” and “path towards the center of a circle”, present in both works, the author notes the impact of Dante upon Melville and determines the differences in their poetics of space. Structural, semantic and comparative-historical analysis of the texts in question allows speaking of the transformation of symbolism of the images of circle and its center, circular, vertical and horizontal movement, as well as reconsideration of meaning of the category of chaos and order, opposition “internal-external” from Dante’s works to worldview of the authors of the era of Romanticism. The novelty of this work consists in simultaneous analysis of the impact of Dante’s poetry upon Melville and comparison of peculiarities of the poetics of space of both authors for determining fundamental changes in representations of the structure of world space and space of the inner world of a person. In artistic realm of H. Melville, symbolic point of the center of a circle – “center of the world” –is no longer static, it becomes unreliable, depicting heads of madman characters and the images of the objects, which semantics does not resemble the concept of emptiness. The motif of the loss of structuredness along with the motif of mutual reciprocity of spatial dimensions and characteristics distinguish Melville’s poetics of space, delineated in the dialogue with distinct features of space arrangement in Dante’s works.

Holden Caulfield: Sort of a Christian

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 653-671
Author(s):  
Bryce A. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Beatific Vision ◽  
The World ◽  
Attitude Toward Christianity

Many critics have remarked on the deeply religious character of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; the novel has been discussed, for example, in terms of Zen Buddhism and Gnosticism. Catcher’s treatment of Christianity, however, has received little attention. This omission is regrettable given the characteristic acuity with which its narrator, Holden Caulfield, addresses Christian sources and themes. The aim of this article, therefore, is to consider in detail Holden’s conflicted attitude toward Christianity. It contends that despite Holden’s biting complaints against Christians (e.g., that many are hypocritical, cliquish, or ostentatious), he manifests an affinity for Christ and an attraction to Christian forms of religious life. This approach to the novel makes much of Holden’s allusion to the story, found in the Synoptic Gospels, of Legion, the Gerasene demoniac. Holden, like Legion, seems ostracized, masochistic, and obsessed by death, but in the novel’s climactic scene at the carousel, he finds healing. Furthermore, in the carousel scene especially, one can detect parallels between Catcher and the Divine Comedy. Just as Dante is guided from hell, through purgatory, to the beatific vision, so Holden is led (principally by his deceased brother Allie and his sister Phoebe) from misery, through purgation, to a moment of ineffable joy. The novel therefore may be read, this article contends, as a religious quest in which Holden comes to perceive the fundamental goodness of the world and its Creator.

scholarly journals ETYMOLOGY IN THE EARTH SCIENCES: FROM ‘GEOLOGIA' TO ‘GEOSCIENCE’

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
RICHARD J. HOWARTH
Keyword(s):  
Earth Sciences ◽  
Similar Pattern ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Physical Geography ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Geological Society ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Google Books

The origin and usage through time of geologia, geognosy, geogony, oryctognosy, geology and geophysics, as characterised by their frequency of occurrence in the Google Books Ngram Corpus, is discussed. The English, French, German, Italian and Spanish corpuses used in this study have been normalised over the same timespan using the average frequencies of occurrence of the same set of ‘neutral’ words in each language (as advocated by Younes and Reips 2019). Use of the term geology is found to predate publication of James Hutton's Theory of the Earth in 1795 by about 100 years; geognosy, oryctognosy and geogony, much less commonly used, became established in the 1780s and began to fall out of use around 1820. The terms geologist, and geognost follow a similar pattern. The emergence of geophysics is a less familiar field: While the phrases physics of the Earth and physical geography can both be traced back to the early 1700s, geophysics only began to be used in the early 1800s and did not really become common until about 1860; geophysicist becomes common in German after 1860, but more generally after 1880. The first geophysics-related publications were bulletins from magnetic and seismic observatories and its first dedicated journal, Beiträge zur Geophysik, began publication in 1887, eighty years after the formation of The Geological Society of London. The tems earth science and geoscience, popular today, have steadily increased in their usage since being introduced in the 1880s and 1930s respectively.

scholarly journals Parodia e ironía como subversión de la tradición en el “Viaje a la oscura ciudad de Cacodelphia”

Acta Poética ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-167
Author(s):  
Eridania González Treviño ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Dante Alighieri ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
General Context ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
The Divine Comedy ◽  
Leopoldo Marechal

This research presents an analysis of the dialog between parody and irony, as a gender and a literary modality respectively, through its subversion function in the “Seventh book (Journey the dark city of Cacodelphia)” of the novel Adán Buenosayres by the argentinean writer Leopoldo Marechal. This study starts with an introductory approach to the general context of the novel, where narrative structure, the positioning of the modern man as the hero of the 20th century are discussed, along with the implicit parody in the “Journey to the dark city of Cacodelphia” and its predominant irony, both as subversive elements of transgression of the represented literary canon, in this case by the “Hell” of the Divine comedy by Dante Alighieri.

scholarly journals IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON GEOMORPHOLOGICAL FIELDWORK: EXPLORATION OF NEW INITIATIVES AND DIMENSIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-03
Author(s):  
Temitope D. Timothy Oyedotun
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Field Training ◽  
Signature Pedagogy ◽  
The World ◽  
Site Field ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has already changed the world in many respects, and its impact cuts across many fields of human endeavours. An area of temporary setbacks in geomorphological research posed by the pandemic is in the restriction placed on fieldwork exercise. Apart from bringing a lot of constraints to fieldwork, the need to meet the learning outcomes ensured that the already in-use technologies were easily adapted to simulate the necessary fieldwork in evaluating dynamics in geomorphological environment and the natural world. Despite the success, however, the fieldwork remains ‘signature pedagogy’ for geography, geomorphology and any other Earth Science disciplines. The dynamic nature of landforms, the serendipity of on-site field training and exercises, the ability to have a first-hand experience of field phenomenon, etc. are some of the expected rewards that could not be simulated remotely. Hence, when COVID-19 pandemic is over, the aspects of fieldwork should not be jettisoned for the simulated alternatives embraced in the pandemic. The two should work hand-in-hand for the diverse fields of geomorphological research.

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