posted on 2019-06-12, 15:43authored byRichard Fallon
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a wealth of discoveries – most of which
were made in the United States – transformed how palaeontologists and the wider public
viewed dinosaurs. By the early decades of the twentieth century, ‘dinosaur’ had changed
from an obscure technical term to a household word and creatures like Brontosaurus
were iconic objects of popular culture. Whereas previous studies of palaeontology in this
period have focused largely on American museums, this thesis examines how these new
dinosaurs were explored in transatlantic mass literary culture. It argues that the
popularisation of dinosaur palaeontology was a transatlantic enterprise in which nonspecialist
writers played a crucial role. By focusing on writers, many of whom were
British and did not work in scientific institutions or contribute to technical journals, this
thesis complicates existing perspectives which emphasise the role of American
palaeontologists, and palaeontologists more generally, in popularisation. It shows that
popular writing on dinosaurs was often antagonistic towards (or apathetic about) the elite
scientific community; in particular, the thesis highlights the significance of the science
journalist Henry Neville Hutchinson (1856–1927), whose prominent writings on
dinosaurs controversially undermined the increasing specialisation of scientific authority
and the complicated literary style of science writing. The thesis also provides new
perspectives on works of American and British fiction, including John Jacob Astor’s A
Journey in Other Worlds (1894) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912),
where dinosaurs were co-opted into narratives of evolutionary progress, national identity,
anti-materialism, imperialism, and romance. Supplementing these published works with
an examination of archival material, the thesis shows that these authors influentially
shaped the ‘meanings’ of dinosaurs in anglophone culture. The thesis thereby combines
insights on the popularisation of science with contributions to the fields of literature and
science and transatlantic literary culture.
History
Supervisor(s)
Dawson, Gowan; Tattersdill, William
Date of award
2019-04-12
Author affiliation
Department of English
Awarding institution
University of Leicester
Qualification level
Doctoral
Qualification name
PhD
Notes
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