Abstract
Our contribution examines the construction and the functions of complex and multi-dimensional scientist characters in contemporary fiction. Our analysis of three very different novels from different branches of Anglophone literature – Ian McEwan’s Solar, Allegra Goodman’s Intuition, and Jaspreet Singh’s Helium – seeks to demonstrate that this phenomenon may be recent but is widespread in contemporary fiction. It can take a variety of forms and can be linked to a range of different types of science and scientific problems, i.e. physics and climate change, cancer research and scientific competition, and rheology/chemistry and the strain of globalising forces symbolised by the Bhopal disaster. In each case, we address the different functions to which the complexities associated with these scientist characters are put in the texts as a whole. Ultimately, in these novels, character functions to provide an opportunity for a mise en discours of a wide range of aspects and factors that are central to the practise of science, as well as for opening up multiple new perspectives on the tensions between science and society.
Works Cited
Alpert, Mark (2008). “We Need More Novels about Real Scientists.” Scientific American. May 1. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mad-scientist-myth> (April 27, 2016).Search in Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland (1990 [1970]). S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Cheeran, John (2013). “When a Big Tree Falls, the Earth Shakes.” Times of India Blogs. December 7. <http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Arrackistan/when-a-big-tree-falls-the-earth-shakes> (May 21, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Cowley, Jason (2010). “Ian McEwan Excels at Climate Science but his One-Dimensional Protagonist Makes You Shudder.” The Guardian. March 14. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/14/solar-ian-mcewan> (June 13, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Forster, E.M. (1927). Aspects of the Novel. London: Edward Arnold & Co.Search in Google Scholar
Gerrard, Greg (2013). “Apocalypse Not.” Sebastian Groes, ed. Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 123–136.Search in Google Scholar
Goodman, Allegra (2006). Intuition. New York, NY: The Dial Press.Search in Google Scholar
Haynes, Roslynn D. (1994). From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Haynes, Roslynn D. (2014). “Whatever Happened to the ‘Mad, Bad’ Scientist? Overturning the Stereotype.” Public Understanding of Science 25.1, 1–14.10.1177/0963662514535689Search in Google Scholar
Housham, Jane (2014). “Helium by Jaspreet Singh Review: A Political Novel that Barely Feels like Fiction.” Review. The Guardian. May 9. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/09/helium-jaspreet-singh-review> (May 21, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Jannidis, Fotis (2004). Figur und Person: Beitrag zu einer historischen Narratologie. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110201697Search in Google Scholar
Keen, Suzanne (2007). Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195175769.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Kerridge, Richard (2010). “The Single Source.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 1.1, 155–161.10.37536/ECOZONA.2010.1.1.334Search in Google Scholar
Kolata, Gina (2006). “Writer Depicts Scientists Risking Glory for Truth and Truth for Glory.” New York Times. March 21. <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/science/21prof.html> (February 17, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Lowry, Elizabeth (2009). “Anything but the Truth.” The Guardian. March 28. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/28/intuition-allegra-goodman-review> (June 11, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg (1971 [1914–1915]). The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Anna Bostock. London: Merlin Press.Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Patrick J. (1970). “Lydgate, ‘The New, Young Surgeon’ of Middlemarch.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 10.4, 805–816.10.2307/449716Search in Google Scholar
McEwan, Ian (2010). Solar. London: Vintage.Search in Google Scholar
Millhauser, Milton (1973). “Dr. Newton and Mr. Hyde: Scientists in Fiction from Swift to Stevenson.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 28.3, 287–304.10.2307/2933001Search in Google Scholar
Nanda, Meera (2000). “The Science Wars in India.” Editors of Lingua Franca, ed. The Sokal Hoax: The Sham that Shook the Academy. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 205–213.Search in Google Scholar
Phelan, James (2004). Living to Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Ratté, Lou (2012). “Unlikely Encounters: Fiction and Scientific Discourse in the Novels of Amitav Ghosh.” Chitra Sankaran, ed. History, Narrative, and Testimony in Amitav Ghosh’s Fiction. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 17–32.10.1515/9781438441825-004Search in Google Scholar
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (1983). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203130650Search in Google Scholar
Sandhu, Amandeep (2013). “Sins of the Father.” The Hindu. November 10. <http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/sins-of-the-father/article5335208.ece> (May 21, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Sarkar, Adheesha (2013). “How not to Forget.” The Telegraph. December 20.Search in Google Scholar
Sethi, Anita (2013). “Helium by Jaspreet Singh.” Review. The Observer. December 15. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/15/helium-jaspreet-singh-review> (June 24, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Singh, Jaspreet (2013). Helium: A Novel. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.Search in Google Scholar
Singh, Rahul (2014). “Charred Stones in Mind.” Outlook. January 27. <http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?289187> (May 21, 2014).Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Murray (2011). “On the Twofoldness of Character.” New Literary History 42.2, 277–294.10.1353/nlh.2011.0022Search in Google Scholar
Vermeule, Blakey (2010). Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.10.1353/book.3505Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Aspects of the Science Novel
- Articles
- Bringing Science into Fiction
- The Scientist as ‘Problematic Individual’ in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction
- The Historical Science Novel and the Narrative of an Emergent Scientific Discourse
- Scientific Metafiction and Postmodernism
- Science in the World Risk Society: Risk, the Novel, and Global Climate Change
- Book Reviews
- Reading Fictions, Changing Minds: The Cognitive Value of Fiction
- Shakespeares Exzess: Sympathie und Ökonomie
- Der flexible Mr. Ripley: Männlichkeit und Hochstapelei in Literatur und Film
- Modernist Authenticities: The Material Body and the Poetics of Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams
- Landschaft und Territorium: Amerikanische Literatur, Expansion und die Krise der Nation, 1784–1866
- Books Received
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Aspects of the Science Novel
- Articles
- Bringing Science into Fiction
- The Scientist as ‘Problematic Individual’ in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction
- The Historical Science Novel and the Narrative of an Emergent Scientific Discourse
- Scientific Metafiction and Postmodernism
- Science in the World Risk Society: Risk, the Novel, and Global Climate Change
- Book Reviews
- Reading Fictions, Changing Minds: The Cognitive Value of Fiction
- Shakespeares Exzess: Sympathie und Ökonomie
- Der flexible Mr. Ripley: Männlichkeit und Hochstapelei in Literatur und Film
- Modernist Authenticities: The Material Body and the Poetics of Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams
- Landschaft und Territorium: Amerikanische Literatur, Expansion und die Krise der Nation, 1784–1866
- Books Received