“The Things We Are”: Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and the Science of Man

• Authors: Berndt Katrin
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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.

Keywords

EN

Alasdair Gray; Scottish Enlightenment philosophy; postmodern narrative; metahistorical novel

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2016
• Issue: 25/1
• Pages: 125-140

Contributors

author

Berndt Katrin

• University of Bremen

References

• Baker, Timothy C. 2014. Contemporary Scottish Gothic: Mourning, Authenticity, and Tradition. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
• Berkeley, George. 2009. “Principles of Human Knowledge. Part I.” Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues. Ed. Howard Robinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1–96.
• Berman, David. 2004. “George Berkeley.” British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment. Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. 5. Ed. Stuart Brown. London: Routledge. 101–122.
• Bernstein, Stephen. 1999. Alasdair Gray. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press.
• Best, M. and D. Neuhauser. 2004. “Ignaz Semmelweis and the Birth of Infection Control.” Quality & Safety Health Care 13: 233–234.
• Böhnke, Dietmar. 2004. Shades of Gray. Science Fiction, History and the Problem of Postmodernism in the Work of Alasdair Gray. Glienicke/ Berlin: Galda + Wilch Verlag.
• Burton, Douglas. 1993. “Plea for a Kinder, Gentler Century.” WorldandISchool. com. n.p. Section Bookworld 5. http://www.worldandischool.com/public/1993/May/school-resource10898.asp.
• Craig, Cairns. 2009. “Arcades – The Turning of the Nineteenth Century.” The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature. Ed. Ian Brown and Alan Riach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 15–24.
• Davie, George Elder. 1999. The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and Her Universities in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Duncan, Ian. 2007. Scott’s Shadow. The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Einstein, Albert. 2012. “Maxwell’s Influence on the Development of the Conception of Physical Reality.” James Clerk Maxwell, A Commemoration Volume 1831–1931. Ed. J. J. Thomson and Max Planck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 66–73.
• Geddes, Patrick. 2015. Civics: As Applied Sociology. The Perfect Library: Create Space. Independent Publishing Platform.
• Gray, Alasdair. 2002. Poor Things. London: Bloomsbury.
• Harman, P. M. 2009. “Maxwell, James Clerk (1831–1879).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. n.p.
• Hume, David. 1987. Essays Moral, Political and Literary. Ed. Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
• Kaczvinsky, Donald P. 2001. “‘Making up for Lost Time’: Scotland, Stories, and the Self in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things.” Contemporary Literature 42. 4: 775–799.
• Kaufman, Jennie. 2009. “Scourges of the Nineteenth Century.” Ancestry 27. 1:52–57.
• Keymer, Thomas. 2005. “Sentimental Fiction: Ethics, Social Critique and Philanthropy.” The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780. Ed. John Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 572–601.
• Lem, Stanisław. 1985. The Cyberiad. San Diego: Harvest.
• MacDonald, W. and J. Arthur Thomson. 1895. “Proem.” The Evergreen. A Northern Seasonal. Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes and Colleagues. 9–15.
• Manning, Susan. 2013. Poetics of Character. Transatlantic Encounters 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• March, Cristie. 2002. “Bella and the Beast (and a Few Dragons, Too): Alasdair Gray and the Social Resistance of the Grotesque.” Critique 43. 4: 323–346.
• Mason, Michael. 2003. The Making of Victorian Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Maxwell, James Clerk. 2003. Theory of Heat. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
• McPhee, Isaac. 2011. The Bedside Book of Physics. From Electricity to Escape Velocities: The E=MC2 of Everyday Life. London: New Burlington Books.
• Meller, Helen. 2008. “Geddes, Sir Patrick (1854–1932).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. n.p.
• Nuland, Sherwin B. 2003. The Doctors’ Plague. Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignaz Semmelweis. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Porter, Roy and Lesley Hall. 1995. The Facts of Life. The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650–1950. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Saunders, Laurance James. 1950. Scottish Democracy, 1815–1840: The Social and Intellectual Background. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.
• Schweighauser, Philipp. 2011. “Information theory.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science. Ed. Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini. London: Routledge. 145–156.
• Stewart, M.A. 2004. “The Scottish Enlightenment.” British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment. Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. 5. Ed. Stuart Brown. London: Routledge. 224–252.
• Thomas, Jane, ed. 1994. Victorian Literature. From 1830 to 1900. Bloomsbury Guides to English Literature. London: Bloomsbury.
• Tiitinen, Johanna. 1999. “Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and the Resurrection of the Frankenstein Monster.” Proceedings from the 7th Nordic Conference on English Studies. Ed. Sana-Kaisa Tanskanen and B. Warvik. Anglicana Turkuensia 20. 315–326.
• Vardoulakis, Dimitris. 2008. “ ‘The Poor Thing.’ The Cosmopolitan in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things.” SubStance #117, 37. 3: 137–151.
• Zankl, Heinrich. 2010. Kampfhähne der Wissenschaft: Kontroversen und Feindschaften. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH Verlag.
• Zoltan, Imre. 2014. “Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. n.p.