The Place of the Royal Society in Victorian Literary Culture

在这个项目中，世界上最重要的科学学会，伦敦皇家学会，将与雷丁大学合作，通过对皇家学会自己的档案、图书馆和出版物的研究，详细揭示皇家学会在维多利亚文学文化中的作用和意义。英国皇家学会在启蒙文化中的重要性是众所周知的。最近的作品，尤其是理查德·福尔摩斯的《奇迹时代》，将这种理解扩展到了浪漫主义时期。但皇家学会在维多利亚文化中的地位仍然不太为人所知。在维多利亚时期，皇家学会是一个重要的社会和文化中心。著名的作家如丁尼生勋爵和马丁·塔珀都是研究员，而h·g·威尔斯等人则为当选而奋斗。许多科学家本身就是重要的作家，包括赫胥黎，约翰·拉伯克和乔治·斯托克斯，而其他人，如约翰·赫歇尔是敏锐的诗人。包括拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生（Ralph Waldo Emerson）在内的外国作家访问了该学会，《皇家学会哲学会刊》（Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society）是当时最受尊敬的科学杂志。伯纳德·莱特曼、爱丽丝·詹金斯、拉尔夫·奥康纳等人在维多利亚时期对科学的传播和普及做了卓有成效的工作。但是，尽管约翰·廷德尔（John Tyndall）和迈克尔·法拉第（Michael Faraday）等科学家个人以及英国皇家学会（Royal Institution）等机构的贡献越来越为人所知，但英国皇家学会并没有得到应有的重视。同样，虽然包括吉莉安·比尔、乔治·莱文和大卫·阿米戈尼在内的文学学者对这一时期科学写作的修辞进行了阐释，但人们的注意力主要集中在查尔斯·达尔文的作品上，而不是当时其他主要科学家的作品上，他们中的许多人都是皇家学会的会员。该项目旨在探索和解释皇家学会以两种不同的方式对维多利亚时代英国文学文化做出贡献的不同方式。首先，该项目将提供一个更全面的了解皇家学会在维多利亚时代科学散文发展中的作用。《哲学汇刊》和《论文集》如何以及在多大程度上决定了科学论文的体裁？他们越来越详细的讣告在建立和塑造科学传记类型方面发挥了什么作用？在多大程度上，它的研究员将皇家学会及其出版物作为一种向更广泛的公众介绍科学思想的手段，或者作为一个讨论科学表达的论坛，以及科学本身？其次，它将使人们更好地理解皇家学会在更广泛的文学文化中的地位。在多大程度上，以何种方式，它是科学家和文学作家交流思想的场所？它是否激发了诗人、小说家、散文家和剧作家对科学的参与？他们之间出现了什么紧张关系？那些非科学作家如何看待他们在协会中的角色，或者协会与他们文学作品的相关性？在这一时期的文学创作中，社会本身又是如何表现的呢？这些问题中的大多数将主要通过研究皇家学会自己的档案来解决，包括手稿、信件、选举证书、出版物和遗赠。还需要在更广泛的文献和期刊上报道该协会，以及研究人员的文学和科学著作。这个项目将对我们越来越多地了解维多利亚时期文学与科学之间的关系做出非常重要的贡献。这将有助于向所有领域的研究人员开放皇家学会档案中一个不太为人所知的部分

For this project the world's premier scientific learned society, the Royal Society of London, will work with the University of Reading to reveal in detail the role and significance of the Royal Society in Victorian literary culture through research on its own archives, library and publications. The significance of the Royal Society within Enlightenment culture is well known. Recent work, notably Richard Holmes's 'The Age of Wonder', has extended that understanding into the Romantic period. But the place of the Royal Society within Victorian culture remains less well understood. The Royal Society was an important social and cultural hub in the Victorian period. Prominent writers such as Lord Tennyson and Martin Tupper were Fellows, and others such as H. G. Wells struggled to be elected. A number of scientific Fellows were themselves significant authors, including T. H. Huxley, John Lubbock and George Stokes, while others such as John Herschel were keen poets. Foreign writers visited the Society, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society' was the most respected scientific journal of the period. Productive work has been done by Bernard Lightman, Alice Jenkins, Ralph O'Connor and others on the dissemination and popularization of science in the Victorian period. But while the contribution of individual scientists such as John Tyndall and Michael Faraday and of institutions such as the Royal Institution are increasingly well known, the Royal Society has not received the attention it deserves. Likewise, while literary scholars including Gillian Beer, George Levine and David Amigoni have shed light on the rhetoric of science writing in this period, the focus has remained largely on the work on Charles Darwin, rather than on other leading scientists of the time, a great many of whom were Fellows of the Royal Society. This project aims to explore and explain the different ways in which the Royal Society contributed to the literary culture of Victorian England in two distinct ways. Firstly, the project will afford a fuller understanding of the role of the Royal Society in the development of scientific prose in the Victorian period. How and how far did the 'Philosophical Transactions' and the 'Proceedings' determine the genre of the scientific paper? What part did their increasingly detailed obituaries play in establishing and shaping the genre of scientific biography? How far did its Fellows use the Royal Society and its publications as a means to introduce scientific ideas to a wider public, or as a forum for discussing the articulation of science, as well as science itself? Secondly, it will enable a better understanding of the place of the Royal Society within the wider literary culture. To what extent and in what ways was it a site for the exchange of ideas between scientists and literary authors? Did it stimulate engagement with science by poets, novelists, essayists and dramatists? What tensions emerged between them? How did those non-scientific writers who were Fellows see their role within the Society, or the Society's relevance to their literary work? And how was the Society itself represented within the creative literature of the period?The majority of these questions will be addressed primarily through research within the Royal Society's own archives, including manuscripts, correspondence, certificates of election, publications and bequests. Work will also be needed on accounts of the Society in the wider literature and the periodical press, and on the writings of Fellows, both literary and scientific. This project will make a very significant contribution to our growing understanding of the relationship between literature and science in the Victorian period. It will help to open up a less well-known section of the Royal Society's archives, to researchers in all fields, b