VICTORIAN METANARRATIVE OF SCIENCE IN POSTMODERN CONTEXT OF THE NOVEL «THE REMARKABLE CREATURES» BY TRACY CHEVALIER
Keywords:
Neo-Victorian novel, natural history novel, metanarrative, epistemologyAbstract
Based on post-structural methodology and Lyotard’s vision of a metanarrative, the article investigates the transformations the Victorian concept of science overcomes in contemporary Neo-Victorian novel. Taken as a sample of the so-called “natural history novel”, Tracy Chevalier’s biofic “The Remarkable Creatures” depicts various conceptual shifts caused by post-modern relativistic paradigm in treating the categories of scientificity and objectivity, as well as in reinterpreting the axiological set of values attributed to a Victorian scientist by official “hagiographic” tradition. The idea of extinction as one of the most problematic matters of Victorian scientific discourse is being investigated via comparative analysis of its symbolic representation both in Victorian and Neo-Victorian novel. As a result of deconstructive analysis, gender and class ideological encodings are being revealed within Victorian scientific discourse as represented in T.Chevalier’s novel. The article, therefore, contributes to the field of Neo-Victorian studies and would be of interest to those studying scientific epistemology functioning in fiction.
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