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- Title
Geological Katabasis : Geology and the Christian Underworld in Kingsley's The Water-Babies.
- Authors
Fountain Eames, Rachel
- Abstract
Charles Kingsley's lifelong interest in geology is well documented - from the gentleman geologists of his early novels and his membership of the Geological Society, to his introduction to earth science for children, Madam How and Lady Why (1870) - but the influence of geological ideas in The Water-Babies (1863) has been largely overlooked. Instead, academics have broadly categorised the novel as an 'evolutionary parable', emphasising Darwinian influences to the exclusion of contemporary geology. I propose that there is a distinct geological subtext underpinning The Water-Babies. Acknowledging both its scientific and religious contexts, I argue that Kingsley integrates elements of his geological studies into clear stratigraphic forms in the novel; that these ideas recur in the novel's surface geography and are informed by his reading of contemporary geologists; and that The Water-Babies is part of a longstanding generic tradition of Christian geological katabasis that can be traced back to Dante's Divine Comedy (1555).
- Subjects
WATER-Babies, The (Book); KINGSLEY, Charles, 1819-1875; GEOLOGY
- Publication
Victoriographies, 2017, Vol 7, Issue 3, p195
- ISSN
2044-2416
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3366/vic.2017.0279