Guest Lecture Dr. Ben Moore

Our programme’s very own Ben Moore is giving a guest lecture on human tissue and the realist novel. This one is not to be missed so make sure you’re there! Please see the abstract below for more details on the talk:

How do realist novels in the nineteenth century imagine the figure of the human? How does literature’s engagement with biological and philosophical discourses shape its use of ‘tissues’ and ‘layering’? Starting from a set of concerns raised by recent debates around anthropocentrism and the Anthropocene, these are the questions explored in my recent book Human Tissue in the Realist Novel, 1850-1895 (2023). In this talk, I outline the approach and argument of the book, focusing on ‘human tissue’ as a conceptual tool for reading that brings together biology, literature and questions of layering. I begin with a theoretical discussion that brings together Amitav Ghosh, Michel Foucault and Sylvia Wynter’s work on realism, ‘Man’ and the human, before tracing how the historical development of the term ‘tissue’ takes a suggestive turn towards biology in the Victorian period. In the second half of the talk, I offer some brief examples of how this approach can inform our readings of authors such as Charles Kingsley, George Eliot and Emile Zola – with particular attention paid to the famous flood ending of Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860).