School of Culture and Communication

This thesis draws from a range of primary materials relating to the Spectric School, a hoax poetry movement concocted in 1916 by poets Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke, to reconcile the movement’s relationship to the backdrop of modernist print culture. Specifically, it argues that Bynner and Ficke exploited a breakdown of discourses surrounding modernist conceptions of authorship, identity, and intention in their construction of the hoax movement. Additionally, this thesis considers the hoax alongside contemporary appraisals of the movement, and argues that the hoaxers’ subversion of what it meant to be an author exposes a growing disjunction during the modernist period between a culture of reviewing and modernist conceptions of authorship. Finally, this thesis considers Bynner and Ficke’s use of a hoax movement as a medium to further their poetic aims and avers that the hoaxers’ retrospective recasting of their motives alongside the development of the hoax complicate current critical valuations of the movement. Through considering Bynner and Ficke’s recasting of poetic intention, I challenge readings of the hoax that interpret it as having had a clear didactic purpose in parodying modernist poetry, and instead argue that the Spectra Hoax serves as an interface of meanings that complicates attempts to inscribe clear notions of authenticity, authorship and intentionality onto it.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, significant changes occurred in the ways in which the general public engaged with scientific discoveries through popular literature. Poetry in particular brought science to a larger audience, one which included those, such as women and children, traditionally excluded from the more mainstream cultural centres of the “new science,” such as gentlemen’s clubs and friendly societies. This thesis examines the changes that occurred in popular science writing, particularly in terms of that writing’s discourses of morality and gender. It explores why verse was so popular (albeit briefly) as a medium for conveying scientific discoveries and research, and why it moved from being a form of scientific discourse primarily authored by men to one in which female writers dominated, before disappearing as a significant form of science writing in the mid-nineteenth century. To this end, the thesis focuses on the reception of Erasmus Darwin’s scientific poetry. Darwin was the period’s most popular and influential verse science writer. For this reason his initial reception and on-going reputation, traced and analysed in depth in this thesis, shed a good deal of light on the cultural shifts occurring in popular science at this time. The thesis also situates Darwin within a long didactic and scientific literary tradition. In contrast to pioneering and influential studies by Desmond King-Hele, Jenny Uglow and Maureen McNeil, I challenge the critically dominant understanding of Darwin as a unique genius whose novelty was the primary force behind both his early success and ultimate obscurity. I elucidate the links between Darwin and his predecessors and contemporaries, demonstrating the significance of this association of his work with pre-existing genres and literary traditions – particularly those concerned with moral didacticism and public improvement. In terms of reception, the thesis draws on published reviews, letters from Darwin's contemporaries, and poems written in praise of his works to examine why the initial publication of Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants (1789) and The Economy of Vegetation (1792) were relatively uncontroversial, despite the emphasis placed by many modern critics on their provocative sexual and philosophical content. I argue that contrary to the prevailing critical consensus, the political backlash against Darwin’s work in the 1790s has been overstated and that his works continued to remain popular into the early 1800s. The thesis examines the significance of this in light of Darwin’s liberal political and religious views, and the high-profile nature of satires of his work such as T.J. Mathias’ The Pursuits of Literature (1794) and The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner’s The Loves of the Triangles (1798). I also examine the relatively measured response to Darwin’s final poem, The Temple of Nature (1803), in which biological evolution is explicitly described, as suggestive of both greater diversity and less extremism in public opinion than is usually associated with this period. Lastly, this thesis argues that the presence of a rich tradition of women’s scientific writing in verse in the early decades of the nineteenth century, much of it directly influenced by Darwin, suggests that didactic poetry remained a vital form for much longer than has been previously thought, and that the genre suffered a slow decline and transformation into other related forms rather than a catastrophic and sudden end. The strong presence of female writers within this tradition also suggests that women found a variety of ways to negotiate the increasing restrictions that the institutionalisation of science placed on their participation, that included drawing on traditional religious and moral sources of authority as a way of maintaining their stature as educators - a position that may ultimately have become problematic as disciplines further solidified.

School of Culture and Communication - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

Filters

Date

Author

Subject

Type

Settings

Sort By

Results per page

Statistics

Citations

Search Results