This work is Volume 2 of an extensive two-volume monograph on the interplay of science and literature in Europe from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It comprises a series of some twenty biographies raisonn?es of literary figures known to have had fascination for, at times an obsession with, science. The linguistic base is broad, primarily French, German and English, but with excursions into Italian, Spanish and Russian. Alongside outstanding individuals, the work chronicles the intellectual movements Naturphilosophie, Naturalism, Positivism, etc., which literature gave rise to through its interaction with science.
Contents: Introduction – Georg B?chner: The Revolutionary – Stifter: Genial Melancholy – Zola: The Naturalist – Strindberg: Scientist of the Inferno – The Zany Element: Cros, Jarry – Auguste Comte: The Virus of Positivism – Albion – Ernst Haeckel and M
