Abstracts of Papers Submitted for the Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania February 10–12, 1966Northeastern Section, the Geological Society of America

1968 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Geological Society

The Geological Society of America

1894 ◽  
Vol 37 (941supp) ◽  
pp. 15043-15044
Author(s):  
E. O. Hovey
Keyword(s):  
Geological Society

Geological Katabasis : Geology and the Christian Underworld in Kingsley's The Water-Babies

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-209
Author(s):  
Rachel Fountain Eames
Keyword(s):  
Earth Science ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Geological Society

Charles Kingsley's lifelong interest in geology is well documented – from the gentleman geologists of his early novels and his membership of the Geological Society, to his introduction to earth science for children, Madam How and Lady Why (1870) – but the influence of geological ideas in The Water-Babies (1863) has been largely overlooked. Instead, academics have broadly categorised the novel as an ‘evolutionary parable’, emphasising Darwinian influences to the exclusion of contemporary geology. I propose that there is a distinct geological subtext underpinning The Water-Babies. Acknowledging both its scientific and religious contexts, I argue that Kingsley integrates elements of his geological studies into clear stratigraphic forms in the novel; that these ideas recur in the novel's surface geography and are informed by his reading of contemporary geologists; and that The Water-Babies is part of a longstanding generic tradition of Christian geological katabasis that can be traced back to Dante's Divine Comedy (1555).

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