Overview
- Argues against the widely held assumption that poetry and systematic knowledge belong to separate kingdoms and have nothing to say to each other
- Addresses the issue of ‘the two cultures’, i.e. the institutional division between the arts and the sciences
- Looks at texts as varied as Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, Vita Sackville-West’s The Land, and Frederick Turner’s Genesis
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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About this book
This book argues that poetry is compatible with systematic knowledge including science, and indeed inherent in it; it also discusses particular poems that engage with such knowledge, including those of Lucretius, Vergil, and Vita Sackville-West. The book argues that there are substantial similarities between knowledge-making and poetry-making, for example in their being shaped by language, including metaphor, and in their seeking unity in the world, under the impulse of eros and pleasure. The book also discusses some of the obstacles to a ‘poetry of knowledge’, including scientific objectivism, the Kantian tradition in philosophy, and the separation of the ‘two cultures’ in our academic and intellectual institutions. The book is designed to be accessible to all those interested in the issue of the ‘two cultures’, or in the role of poetry and of science in contemporary culture.
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Keywords
Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
John G. Fitch is Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria, Canada. His publications focus on the Roman writer Seneca, and include a two-volume text and translation of Seneca’s dramas in the Loeb Classical Library (revised edition 2018). He farmed sheep and fruit trees on Vancouver Island, and published a book of poems on wildflowers of the British Columbia coast (2013).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Poetry of Knowledge and the 'Two Cultures'
Authors: John G. Fitch
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89560-4
Publisher: Palgrave Pivot Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-89559-8Published: 31 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-89560-4Published: 16 May 2018
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 155
Topics: Poetry and Poetics