Victorian Nightshades (eBook)

How the Solanaceae Shaped the Modern World

Elizabeth A. Campbell (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
348 Seiten
University of Virginia Press (Verlag)
9780813952550 (ISBN)

Infos

A darkly alluring plant family and the arrival of modernityVictorian Nightshades tells the story of how one plant familynotorious for centuries in England because of its frequently psychoactive and poisonous propertiesrose to social and economic prevalence during the nineteenth century. Beginning with bittersweet and belladonna, the Old World species associated with evil, witchcraft, and dangerous women in an era when traditional botanical beliefs not only assigned morality to plants but also gendered them, Campbell then moves to the ubiquitous potato and tobacco before concluding with four of the Solanaceae that achieved the widest national favor by the end of the century: the ornamental petunia and the edible pepper, eggplant, and tomato. The story of the nightshades exposes the conflicts between science and popular sentiment and between knowledge and received opinion that defined the nineteenth century. Campbell compellingly details how advances in medical and botanical knowledge, evolutionary theory, and the vagaries of human desire transformed the Solanaceae from a plant family plagued by fear and hostility in the British imagination to one of cultural favor and celebration by the turn of the centuryencapsulating the Victorian era's course to modernity.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 27.3.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Victorian Literature and Culture Series
• Zusatzinfo: 45 b&w illus
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 160 x 160 mm
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Botanik
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Schlagworte: 19th-century England • Belladona • Bittersweet • Botany • British Culture • British Literature • deadly nightshades • Dulcamara • edibe pepper • edible pepper • eggplant • England • ethnobotany • Evolutionary Theory • Gender Studies • horticulture • love elixirs • medical knowledge • Natural History • Nineteenth-Century • petunias • Poisonous plants • potato • potatoes • Psychoactive Plants • Scientific discourse • sentimental discourse • Solanaceae species • tobacco • tomatoes
• ISBN-13: 9780813952550 / 9780813952550