Biological Time, Historical Time

Niklas Bender is substitute Professor for Romance Literatures at Trier and Tübingen University. His works focus on literature and science, comic procedures, laughter and anthropology. Recently, he published The Laughter of Art: the Contribution of the Comic to Modernist Literature.Gisèle Séginger, full professor at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée and member of the Institut Universitaire de France, is the founder of the Centre de Recherche Littératures, Savoirs et Arts (LISAA) and director of a research program at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. She is a specialist on Flaubert, Nerval, Musset and on the relations between literature and scientific knowledge.

• The AuthorsIntroductionNiklas Bender and Gisèle SégingerPart 1: Rethinking the Order of TimeFrom Biblical Time to Darwinian Time: Discourses on the Living World in the 18th and 19th CenturiesPascal DurisMemory Strata, Geology and Change of Historical Paradigm in France around 1830Paule PetitierDevilish Words: Pierre Boitard, “maître Georges” and the Advance of NatureClaude BlanckaertFrom Biological Time to Historical Time: the Category of “Development” (Entwicklung) in the Historical Thought of Herder, Kant, Hegel, and MarxChristophe Bouton“O man! wilt thou never conceive that thou art but an ephemeron?”: the Reception of Geological Deep Time in the Late 18th CenturyDavid SchulzPart 2: Atavism and HeredityThe Law of Progress, Atavism, and Prehistory in the Belle ÉpoqueArnaud HurelNietzsche, or Culture Put to the Test at the Timescale of HeredityEmmanuel SalanskisZola, Hereditability of Character and Hereditability of Deviation: After a Remark by Bergson in L’Évolution CréatriceArnaud FrançoisLife, Sex and Temporality in Zola’s La Faute de l’Abbé MouretRudolf BehrensPart 3: Nature and CultureTime of History and Time of Nature in the Historical Novels of Victor HugoNiklas BenderHistorical Time, Cultural Time, and Biological Time in BaudelaireThomas KlinkertEvolution and Time in the Chants de MaldororFrank JägerMemory of the Body in Proust: Historical Time and Biological TimeEdward BizubPart 4: Poetics of TimeThe Poetics of Restored Time: Balzac, His Age and the Figure of CuvierHugues MarchalThe Evolution of Social Species in Balzac’s Comédie humaineSandra ColletTime as Imagined in the Evolutionary EpicNicolas WanlinEvolutionism and Successivity in Antediluviana, Poème géologique by Ernest Cotty (1876)Yohann RinguedéEnd of the World, End of Time: the Theory of Evolution and Its Fate in the Novel of AnticipationClaire Barel-MoisanA Biologist Literary History: August Wilhelm Schlegel and the Franco-German Natural SciencesStefan KnödlerPart 5: Biology and IdeologyEvolutionary Time and Revolutionary Time (Michelet, Flaubert, Zola)Juliette AzoulaiMichelet and La Mer: Biology and the Philosophy of HistoryGisèle Séginger“Il faut manger et être mangé pour que le monde vive”: the Zolian Belly amidst Evolution, Revolution, and ConvolutionsCarine GoutalandGobineau’s Heroes Are AgelessPierre-Louis ReyDarwinus anarchistus explodens: Science and the Legend of the Struggle for Life (Louise Michel)Claude RétatIndex