Ecology, Civility, and Civilisation in late-Victorian Science Fiction Seminar
- Time:
- 16:00 - 18:00
- Date:
- 25 April 2018
- Venue:
- Lecture Theatre B, Avenue Campus, SO17 1BF
For more information regarding this seminar, please email Mary Andrew at m.j.andrew@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
Part of the SCNR Seminar Series for 2017-18.
This talk examines the permeation of environmental concerns and ecological ideas within science-fiction’s ‘alternative history’ subgenre. Set in near or distant futures, William Delisle Hay’s The Doom of the Great City (1880), Richard Jefferies’ ‘The Great Snow’ (1876), ‘Snowed Up’ (date unknown), and After London (1885), Robert Barr’s ‘The Doom of London’ (1895), and Grant Allen’s ‘The Thames Valley Catastrophe’ (1897) each inflict devastation on Britain’s capital. Examining this vehement and unprecedented outburst of literary violence against London, I argue that the texts reflect both growing environmental alarm and the intensifying role of ecological models and metaphors in representations of the human during these decades.
Speaker information
Dr Mark Frost , University of Portsmouth. My academic career began with an MRes at the Ruskin Programme at the University of Lancaster, and after completing my PhD I began teaching at Portsmouth in 2006. I am co-editor of Eighth Lamp: the Journal of Ruskin Studies (OScholars), a member of the editorial board of OneHand Press, and a member of the Ruskin-in-Wyre Steering Group based in the Wyre Forest near Bewdley. I was an annotations contributor for the Routledge ABES project, and the Leverhulme-funded Electronic Edition of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters I at the Ruskin Programme, Lancaster University.