Fictional Matter: Empiricism, Corpuscles, and the Novel

by Helen Thompson

In a groundbreaking study of the relationship between chemistry and literary history, Helen Thompson explores the ways in which chemical conceptions of matter shaped eighteenth-century British culture. Although the scientific revolution championed experimental, sense-based knowledge, chemists claimed that perceptible bodies were made of invisible particles or "corpuscles." Neither modern elements nor classical atoms, corpuscles were reactive, divisible...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812248724
• ISBN13: 9780812248722
• Release Date: January 2017
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.1" x 9.1"