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Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction » (3rd Edition)

Authors: Gillian Beer
ISBN-13: 9780521743617, ISBN-10: 0521743613
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date Published: May 2009
Edition: 3rd Edition

New edition of highly acclaimed book examining Darwin's work in a literary/cultural context.

	Foreword
	Preface to the first edition
	Preface to the second edition
	Introduction	1
Pt. I	Darwin's language	23
1	'Pleasure like a tragedy': imagination and the material world	25
2	Fit and misfitting: anthropomorphism and the natural order	44
Pt. II	Drawin's plots	71
3	Analogy, metaphor and narrative in The Origin	73
4	Darwinian myths	97
I	Growth and its myths	97
II	Growth and transformation	99
III	Transformation, retrogression, extinction: Darwinian romance	114
Pt. III	Responses: George Eliot and Thomas Hardy	137
5	George Eliot: Middlemarch	139
I	The vital influence	139
II	Structure and hypothesis	148
III	The web of affinities	156
6	George Eliot: Daniel Deronda and the idea of a future life	169
7	Descent and sexual selection: women in narrative	196
8	Finding a scale for the human: plot and writing in Hardy's novels	220
	Notes	242
	Select bibliography of primary works	267
	Index	273