CAROLINE LEVINE. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network

Review of English Studies 66 (2015), 1001-

The Experimental Self: Humphry Davy and the Making of a Man of Science

Annals of Science 74 (2017), 335-

‘“A fit person to be Poet Laureate”: Tennyson, In Memoriam, and the Laureateship’

Tennyson Research Bulletin 9 (2009), 233-4

ROBERT M. RYAN. Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Review of English Studies 67 (2016), 1011-1

Identity, taxonomy and seed-borne aspects of the gray leaf spot organism on blue lupin : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Agricultural Science at Massey University

While conducting studies in the Manawatu on the brown spot disease of blue lupins 1/ caused by Pleiochaeta setosa (Kirchn.) Hughes, Milne (1964) frequently encountered a Stemphylium disease characterised by necrotic lesions on leaves, stems and pods. A disease caused by a species of this genus had not previously been reported on blue lupins in New Zealand, but in the United States of America Wells, Forbes, Webb and Edwardson (1956) described two previously unrecognised diseases on this host, namely "little leaf spot" caused by Stemphylium botryosum Wallroth and "gray leaf spot" caused by S. solani Weber. Milne considered his isolates to be S• botryosum but was confused by the symptoms being typical of those recorded for S.solani (gray leaf spot). He did not pursue the matter further and at the completion of his studies on P• setosa there remained the unresolved question of the identity of the Stemphylium species present on blue lupin in the Manawatu. [From Introduction

Keats, Myth, and the Science of Sympathy

This essay considers the connections between myth and sympathy in Keats’s poetic theory and practice. It argues that the ‘Ode to Psyche’ exemplifies the way in which Keats uses mythological narrative, and the related trope of apostrophe, to promote a restrained form of sympathy, which preserves an objectifying distance between the poet and the feelings that his poetry examines. This model of sympathy is informed by Keats’s medical training: the influential surgeon Astley Cooper and The Hospital Pupil’s Guide (1816) both identify a sensitive but restrained sympathy for patients’ suffering as an essential part of the scientific and professional methods of nineteenth-century medicine. However, while The Hospital Pupil’s Guide claims that mythological superstition has been superseded in medicine by positivist science, Keats’s ode suggests that myth retains a central role in poetry, as the foundation of a poetic method that mediates between imaginative sympathy and objective impartiality

Humphry Davy and the Problem of Analogy

Analogy, the comparison of one set of relations to another, was essential to Humphry Davy’s understanding of chemistry. Throughout his career, Davy used analogical reasoning to direct and to interpret his experimental analyses of the chemical reactions between substances. In his writing, he deployed analogies to organise and to explain his theories about the relations between physical processes and between the properties of different chemical elements and compounds. But Davy also regularly expressed two concerns about analogical comparison: first, that it was founded not on the rational interpretation of facts but on imaginative speculation; and second, that it was a kind of rhetoric, the persuasiveness of which depended not on material evidence but on misleading figures of speech. This article discusses the influences that informed Davy’s ambivalent assessment of the value of analogy, and it examines the distinct yet overlapping ways in which this assessment was expressed in his notebooks, his lectures and treatises on chemistry, his philosophical writings, and his poetry

Austen's Literary Alembic: Sanditon, Medicine, and the Science of the Novel

This essay examines the representation of science in Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon. It argues that this text, written in the months before Austen’s death in 1817, points to a development in her understanding of the novel, one that associates the form with the emerging scientific disciplines of the early nineteenth century through its emphasis on empirical objectivity and professional expertise. These traits are exemplified in the medical profession, which is central to Sanditon’s plot. Austen’s text presents a range of different types of medical knowledge and practice, and it celebrates professional medical advice as a safe middle ground between the commercial exploitation of quackery and the uninformed subjectivism of hypochondria. Similar issues are at stake in the text’s considerations of the literary marketplace: while acknowledging some of the problems involved in the growing commodification of the novel, Sanditon also satirizes the undisciplined reading habits of careless readers, and it promotes a view of the novel as an objective and professional articulation of knowledge. Sanditon’s advocacy of professional objectivity is conveyed in its narrative stance as well as its plot: the text focuses not on the subjectivity of a single protagonist but on the objective observation and experimental comparison of the interactions between a number of characters and between those characters and their environment. The essay concludes that the methodologies of science, as they were practiced within the medical profession, played a significant part in Austen’s understanding of the profession of writing at the end of her career

Infinite Movement: Robert Browning and the Dramatic Travelogue

Victorian Poetry 52 (2014), 185-20