Darwin's Bards - by John Holmes (Paperback)

About the Book

A comprehensive study of Darwin's legacy for religion, ecology and the arts. Includes over 50 complete poems and long extracts with an interpretative framework and close readings. Poets examined include Tennyson, Browning, Hardy, Frost, Ted Hughes, Pattiann Rogers and Edwin Morgan.

Book Synopsis

The first comprehensive study of how poets have responded to the ideas of Charles Darwin in over fifty years
In Darwin's Bards John Holmes argues that poetry can have a profound impact on how we think and feel about the human condition in a Darwinian world. Including over fifty complete poems and substantial extracts from several more, Holmes shows how poets from Tennyson and Browning, through Hardy and Frost, to Ted Hughes, Pattiann Rogers and Edwin Morgan have responded to the discovery of evolution. Written for scientists, philosophers and ecologists, as well as poets, critics and students of literature, Darwin's Bards is a timely intervention into the heated debates over Darwin's legacy for religion, ecology and the arts.
The book will appeal to readers for its discussion of the existential implications of Darwinism, for its close readings of poetry, and for the reprinted poems themselves.
Key Features
Covers poetry and ecology, as well as the implications of Darwinism for religionThe combination of complete poems and long extracts with an interpretative framework and close readings makes the book an effective and attractive text book

From the Back Cover

"Darwin's Bards is a bracing, original and exciting contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the cultural impact of Darwinism; indeed, John Holmes is to be commended for writing an exhilarating and genuinely interdisciplinary study with revealing insights on every page." Roger Ebbatson, The Thomas Hardy Journal "John Holmes's coverage of the relationship between science and poetry is remarkably complete. He has a scientist's grasp of evolutionary theory and a thorough understanding of both the controversies the theory has engendered and the difficulty many have had in finding meaning in an existence framed by Darwinism. Holmes's investigation of how poetry addresses these problems is unique." Douglas Shedd, The Catherine Ehrman Thoresen '23 and William E. Thoresen Professor of Biology, Randolph College Newly available in paperback, Darwin's Bards is the first comprehensive study of how poets have responded to the ideas of Charles Darwin in over fifty years. John Holmes argues that poetry can have a profound impact on how we think and feel about the Darwinian condition. Is a Darwinian universe necessarily a godless one? What is our own place in the Darwinian universe, and our ecological role here on Earth? How does our kinship with other animals affect how we see them and ourselves? Holmes explores the ways in which some of the most perceptive and powerful British and American poets of the last hundred-and-fifty years have grappled with these questions, from Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, through Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, to Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, Amy Clampitt and Edwin Morgan. Including over fifty poems and substantial extracts from many more, Darwin's Bards gives us the chance to experience for ourselves what it can mean to live in a Darwinian world. John Holmes is Chair of the British Society for Literature and Science and a senior lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading.

Review Quotes

John Holmes's coverage of the relationship between science and poetry in Darwin's Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution is remarkably complete. He has a scientist's grasp of evolutionary theory and a thorough understanding of the controversies the theory has engendered. He also understands the difficulty many have had in finding meaning in an existence framed by Darwinism. Holmes's investigation of how poetry addresses these problems is unique, and he is correct in thinking that, "poems can even change how we think about Darwinism itself." Evolutionary science provides many of the details for understanding why the world is the way it is, but we need "Darwin's Bards" to help us interpret these details, incorporate them into our collective consciousness, and fully understand what it means to live in a Darwinian world.--Douglas Shedd, Thoresen Professor of Biology, Randolph College

Darwin's Bards affords subtle, precise, sharp-eyed readings of verse by such well-known Victorian poets as Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Swinburne and Hardy, as well as more recent poems by the likes of Ted Hughes, Philip Appleman and Thom Gunn. Each of these poets, Holmes argues, grapples with the fundamental, largely unchanging challenges posed by Darwinian evolution, with the book's chapters each focusing on topics including theology, death and immortality, humanity's cosmic insignificance and relationship with other animals, and sex and reproduction... the detailed analysis of verse that deals with these issues often yields fresh insights that will be of interest to more historically minded critics.--Gowan Dawson, University of Leicester "British Journal for the History of Science"

Darwin's Bards is a bracing, original and exciting contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the cultural impact of Darwinism; indeed, John Holmes is to be commended for writing an exhilarating and genuinely interdisciplinary study with revealing insights on every page.--Roger Ebbatson "The Thomas Hardy Journal"

Darwin's Bards is a welcome study. Holmes has selected a bold and expansive topic, one that needed the careful attention that he has shown it ... No doubt we will hear more about Darwin among the poets (it is to be hoped that we do), and Holmes will have provided this narrative with a fitting point of origin.--Jason David Hall, University of Exeter "The British Society for Literature and Science"

Darwin's Bards is the most exciting work of Darwin scholarship in the past ten or twenty years. Combining a truly flabbergasting overall knowledge of poetry on and around evolutionary themes with a keen critical understanding, it yields a vision of the Darwinian Revolution that caused me, after over forty years of thinking and writing on the subject, to revise substantially my interpretation and evaluation of one of the most important intellectual and cultural events of Western history.--Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, Florida State University

John Holmes has produced a forceful, tightly-argued reminder of the challenge that the theory of evolution poses to many of the subjects which literature has marked as its own territory.--Philip Martin, University of Glasgow "The Kelvingrove Review"

One is struck equally by the magnitude of the task that Holmes took on, and his success in achieving his twin goals of tracing the influence of Darwin's theory on a range of poets, and describing the illumination that their poems can throw in turn on one of the most powerful intellectual currents of our time.--Michael Buhagiar, University of Sydney "Victoriographies Vol. 4, No. 1"

Poetry makes evolution conceivable, letting the ear and the imagination know that which the mind struggles to grasp. With its fine ear for poetry's engagement with the science of its age, Darwin's Bards contributes to this work, encouraging an alertness to and enjoyment of the poetry of evolution.--Anna Barton, University of Sheffield "Tennyson Research Bulletin"

Rich and meticulous analyses ... Darwin's Bards is important not only because it engages oft-overlooked evolutionary poetry, but because its critical discussions provide us with a heretofore missing link in Darwinian literary criticism; in so doing, they give us new views of our Darwinian realities.--Janine Rogers, Mount Allison University "Review of English Studies"

About the Author

John Holmes is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Reading