“The Things We Are”: Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and the Science of Man
Journal Title: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies - Year 2016, Vol 25, Issue 1
Abstract
The aim of this article is to examine the influence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy on Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992) with a particular focus on its references to the natural and life sciences. The essay argues that the novel allegorizes two central themes of the eighteenth-century Science of Man: it stresses the social nature of human beings,and it aims for a comprehensive portrayal of human nature whose different aspects are depicted in explicit connection with one another. The article shows that Gray employs the emancipatory framework of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy in order to communicate an idealistic belief in the possibility of gradual improvement of society.
Authors and Affiliations
Katrin Berndt
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP175115
- DOI -
- Views 4
- Downloads 0
British Film Propaganda in the Netherlands: Its Preconditions and Missed Opportunities
British film propaganda directed at neutral countries was meant to strengthen the pro-British attitude or at least weaken pro-German sentiments in the neutral countries. Directed at the wide strata of neutral societies a...
And þan it wole be a good oynement restoratif... Pre- and Postnominal Adjectives in Middle English Medical Recipes
The present paper concentrates on the use of adjective modifiers in Middle English medical recipes. Although the study of the position of attributive adjectives in Middle English nominal phrases has attracted attention o...
“I’ll risk you, if you’ll risk me”: The Ambiguity of Human Existence and Relationships in Marilyn Duckworth’s Married Alive
The aim of this paper is to analyse Marilyn Duckworth’s Married Alive within the framework of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy of ambiguity, risk and reciprocal recognition. It is argued that the New Zealand writer repres...
Of Motion and Emotion: The Mechanics of Endurance in Peter Carey’s The Chemistry of Tears
Guided by Jacques Derrida’s observations about the aporetic logic of the archive, this reading of Peter Carey’s novel The Chemistry of Tears (2012) relies on contemporary philosophical discourse about the human-thing int...
Trading Rationality for Tomatoes: The Consolidation of Anglo-American National Identities in Popular Literary Representations of Italian Culture
In The Rhetoric of Empire (1993), David Spurr analyzes journalistic discourse on the Third World and isolates a nucleus of rhetorical figures around which representations of the colonial and post-colonial other are artic...