literature and geology Reference to geology in literature may occur in several ways. It may be by way of setting a scene, a topography, a location; it may be in connection with a resource or other geological materials (gold is a favourite); it may refer to a natural disaster; it may relate to the characters involved.
Many ancient writings are concerned with the nature of the physical world, its place in the cosmos, and the natural hazards it inflicts upon mankind. Most of them reveal little observation and much myth, but they are of no less value because of that. Astronomical observations in some other ancient writings are, on the other hand, detailed and extensive. Reference to ancient Egyptian, Hindu, and other scripts, and the writings of scholars in classical and other periods of history is made elsewhere in this volume. The Bible has many passages which attracted the attention of the early geo-logists. Most notable is the story of the Deluge. There are many indications of widespread floods in the Quaternary geology of Mesopotamia and in the Black Sea basin which have exercised scholars on the subject of Noah's adventure. The crossing of the Red Sea by the fleeing Israelites has similarly prompted speculation about tsunamis and sudden violent earth movements.
Other natural disasters have been part of the scenarios of novels such as Bulwer Lytton's
The last days of Pompeii (1834). There, the sudden eruption of Vesuvius in 79 provided a suitable background climax to the misdemeanours of local society.
At a later period, the permeation of geological ideas into literature is exemplified in Thomas Hardy's novel
A Pair of Blue Eyes, published in 1873. In a dramatic episode, Henry Knight, ‘a fair geologist’ in Hardy's description, is left clinging to a cliff-face with the sea far below him. He sees ‘a creature with eyes’, a trilobite, standing out in low relief from the rock, and in his perilous situation reflects on the myriad forms of life that had existed in the millions of years between the present and the time when the fossil was still a living creature.
The American humorist Mark Twain, in his
Life on the Mississippi (1883), refers to the meanders in the course of that great river and comes to some amusing conclusions about the rates of fluvial processes. He knew some of the jargon and was happy to use it in a carefree way.
Descriptions of spectacular topography as a setting for narrative or history have been provided by many modern writers.
The novels of Zane Grey, which were among the first of recount adventures in the American West, contain much accurate topographical detail. In more recent times the tradition has been continued by Louis Lamour. T. E. Lawrence was aware of the importance of arid landscape as a war setting in his
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Among modern novelists, Hammond Innes and Neville Shute have set the action in remote regions described with a keen eye for topographical, and even geological, detail.
Dr Tony Cooper of the British Geological Survey has suggested that the famous episode at the beginning of
Alice in Wonderland in which Alice falls down a rabbit-hole may have been inspired by a geological event. In 1834 a collapse in gypsum beds at Ripon left a hole more than 18 metres deep near a house occupied by a clergyman with whom Lewis Carroll ( Charles Dodgson) was well acquainted. Tony Cooper thinks it probable that Lewis Carroll, who grew up in Ripon, would have heard about this and other similar events in the area. The collapse resulted from the solution of gypsum (calcium sulphate) by underground water.
Few geologists have themselves turned to writing poetry or prose other than doggerel or autobiography. Hugh Miller (1802–56), best known for his book
The Old Red Sandstone, is a notable exception. This is perhaps surprising: a geologist's life is one of action in the field, which may bring encounters with exotic places and wildlife, danger as well as natural beauty, and possibly hostile natives. In modern times, several North American Earth scientists, F. J. Pettijohn, G. G. Simpson, and J. Tuzo Wilson among them, have produced highly readable accounts of their travels or exploits.
Science fiction would seem to be a suitable genre for the subject, but in fact there are few such novels, apart from some notable early exceptions. Jules Verne's novels
A journey to the centre of the Earth (1864) and
Twenty-thousand leagues under the sea (1873), published originally in France, refer knowledgeably to geological phenomena and were highly successful in their day. Conan Doyle's
The Lost World (1912) described both geologists and dinosaurs in an Amazonian forest setting and was a splendid example of adventure writing of its time. The resurrection of dinosaurs from geologically preserved dinosaur DNA was the subject of Michael Crichton's
Jurassic Park, which was spectacularly adapted as an epoch-making film in 1992.
Earth science heroes are rare in literature. In John Fowles's novel
The French lieutenant's woman the hero is a young amateur palaeontologist visiting Lyme Regis in Dorset to collect fossils from the Mesozoic rocks in the cliffs. Is there perhaps an echo here of Hardy's Henry Knight?
Non-technical anthologies of writings on the Earth sciences are rather few—at least in English. The notable exception is the
Language of the Earth, edited by F. H. T. Rhodes and R. O. Stone (1981). It includes prose items from the time of Goethe to the 1970s; its selection of poetry extends back to the Book of Job, in which Chapter 28 concerns the valuable or precious materials man has mined from the Earth.
The surprising source of an article on ‘Palaeontology in literature’ by Archie Lamont, a palaeontologist and Scottish Nationalist, was
The Quarry Manager's Journal for 1947 (vol. 30, January and March). Lamont found more to quote from poetry than from prose and referred to many of the better-known poets and to others less often read. It may be time for an anthology of Earth science poems—or at least verses—to be published. There is much from which to choose: Milton, Shelley, Tennyson, and Wordsworth are among the many poets who have touched upon geological themes. Many of the spectacular advances in the geological realm in recent years have inspired palaeontologists and their kin to compose but not to publish formally some quite respectable lines. The advent to continental drift and plate tectonics as major concepts in modern geological thinking also have prompted several well-known geologists to compose poetry.
The popularization of science and of its history has achieved excellence by an increasing number of authors in many countries in recent decades. In Britain the Earth sciences have been fortunate in attracting such writers as Nigel Calder, Ron Redfern, and John Gribbin, while in the USA Stephen Jay Gould has produced a stream of remarkable essays. Writing for television science programmes was the spur that eventually led to some of these essays or books, and there is no doubt that radio, television, film, and the popular science press today all encourage writers of ability and interest in the Earth sciences. Their influence on literature may be at second hand but is none the less important.
D. L. Dineley
Bibliography
Craig, G. Y. and and Jones, E. J. (1982) A geological miscellany. Orbital Press, Oxford.
Hazen, R. M. (ed.) (1982) The poetry of geology. Allen and Unwin, London.
Rhodes, F. H. T. and and Stone, R. O. (1981) Language of the Earth. Pergamon Press, New York.
