The Human Species and the Good Gripping Dreams of H.G. Wells
2013; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 47; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2374-6629
Autores Tópico(s)Evolution and Science Education
ResumoH.G. (1866-1946) has a peculiar place in literary history. He had ambitions as a realist novelist, a satirist, a journalist, and a historical commentator. Though his greatest ambitions were directed toward large-scale political reformation, history has judged otherwise. He is now remembered almost exclusively for his early fantastical stories. The attention given to in academic literary study has been sporadic, sometimes enthusiastic and sometimes mildly apologetic (McLean Wells Studies). Nonetheless, his popular appeal has endured. The Invisible Man was first adapted for film in 1933, and the stories and characters of Wells's science fiction treasury continue to proliferate in worldwide popular culture. His early novels are cross-cultural classics continuously in print, and they have influenced several subgenres of science fiction.Wells's early fiction is compelling in part because he had an imaginative grasp of human evolution. He was bom seven years after Darwin's On the Origin of Species had located humanity in the tree of life, and he was taught evolutionary biology by Darwin's disciple T.H. Huxley. He was one of the first literary authors to achieve success by depicting the human species in an explicidy Darwinian guise. combined his knowledge of evolutionary biology with a rich selection of past and present imaginative and sociological ideas. By developing a worldview that aimed at a full scientific understanding of human behavior, he achieved breadth and originality. Some of his early science fiction and speculative sociological prose contains visions of future events, habits and technology that still impress modem readers with their prescience. He saw human development clearly enough to predict both tank warfare and Wikipedia ('The Land Ironclads 1903, World Brain 1938). But he also predicted and supported a worldwide totalitarian state that would be guided by self-transcending rationality, eliminating those who failed to live up to the new needs of efficiency (Anticipations 317). The weaknesses of that vision are not just moral. From a modem evolutionary perspective, Wells's view of the needs and possibilities of the human species has important limitations.Literary scholars have not yet situated in the context of modem evolutionary science. Because of the broad split between the humanities and the natural sciences that C.P. Snow identified in speaking of the two cultures, explanations of Wells's fiction have been set apart from the progress of scientific knowledge. Up until a few decades ago, criticism on was guided largely by traditional humanistic methods and concerns: a focus on historical and biographical facts, metaphorical re-description, and an appreciative channeling of style (Bergonzi; Crossley; Hillegas; Philmus and Suvin). During the last few decades, criticism has been informed by the theories of ethnicity, class, and gender associated with postmodern cultural studies, and it has been governed by poststructuralist assumptions of indeterminacy and anti-intentionalism (Beer; Glendening; McLean Wells Studies; Richter; Rieder). Such criticism has seen as a locus for intermingling cultural influences. It has focused largely on how scientific narrative affected literary narrative in his early fiction, tracing the effect of select thinkers and debates, and explaining how particular ideas found their way into his texts (Glendening; McLean Early Fiction; McLean Wells Studies 1-8; Richter 62-67). Consequently, scientific knowledge about the human species has developed without more than indirectly influencing our understanding of Wells's fiction.In this article, I will use an interpretive framework that incorporates knowledge from the evolutionary social sciences as well as cultural-historical and biographical factors. I will focus on the early fiction for which is most remembered, particularly The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau. He himself called those works playful parables and likened them in effect to a good gripping dream (Wells ''Preface vi, iii). …
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