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RUSKIN, DARWIN, AND LOOKING BENEATH SURFACES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2017

Katelin Krieg
Katelin Krieg*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
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Extract

John Ruskin and Charles Darwin shared a desire to change the way their readers looked at both nature and art. However, when considering them together, we typically remember their failure to see eye to eye on man's place in nature. Examining Ruskin's responses to Darwin's work, sexual selection in particular, or Ruskin's late dissatisfaction with Victorian science more generally, scholars have emphasized their conflicting worldviews. Yet this tendency to focus on conceptual disagreement fails to consider a shared intellectual background between the two men: the science of geology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 709 - 726
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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