빅토리아 시대 과학소설에 나타난 진화론에 대한 연구` —생명 탐구와 진화론적 반응 양상을 중심으로

초록

There are not a few researches on Darwin’s social and cultural impact uponthe Victorian novels such as Charles Dickens’s, George Eliot’s, and ThomasHardy’s as the writers reflected Darwinian elements into the relationshipbetween the fictional characters and into the social and economicdevelopment of the human community portrayed in the novels. However,there are few academic papers interrogating the specific scientific elements ofDarwin theory which were projected in the Victorian science fiction. In thispaper, therefore, Darwinian concepts of natural selection and Lyell’sgeological influence upon Darwin’s theory would be explored which can befound in the novels like Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and H. G. Wells’ novellas. In the process of exploring the facts, moreover, we mayrecognize how the narrative in the stories made the matrix of storiesassociated with Darwin’s theory and how much strong the social and culturalresponses of the Victorians to the theory were. Even though some peopleagreed to the idea that evolution involves progress, others believed thatevolution would bring them to degeneration. Nevertheless, no one denies thateverything is evolutionarily linked to each other because the theory hasbecome strongly influential already. So at this moment we need to imaginehow humans’ life can be free and independent from Darwinian mechanism.

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