(1)īiological and social factors were believed to constitute degeneration. Rather, environment was believed to "operate in various ways to different effects, and the most adaptive inherited characteristics were not necessarily the 'highest' or most 'civilized' ones." Attention shifted to examples of regression. The concept of degeneration gained currency as Charles Darwin and others came to see that evolution and progress were not synonymous. The tension between prosperity and decline at the heart of the family saga is reflected in the anxieties about ill heath that circulated during the late nineteenth century across the natural and medical sciences as well as the arts. The role of the family comments on the larger political sphere of society and nation inhabited by the family saga. In a manner that befits the family saga genre, the Forsyte Chronicles stages a battle between the family as imperial exemplum and its overthrow-of dynastic ambitions versus degenerative tendencies, of triumphalist rhetoric versus the family in decline. AT THE HEART of John Galsworthy's three-volume family saga, the Forsyte Chronicles (1906-1933), is a certain nervousness about the health of the family and the English nation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |