Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T20:01:16.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 4 - The “arithmetic of futurity”: poetry, population, and the structure of the future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Maureen N. McLane
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

In Thomas Love Peacock's novel Melincourt (1817), the seventh chapter, entitled “The Principle of Population,” features a sustained conversation between the Malthusian Mr. Fax and the Shelleyan Sylvan Forester. As is typical of Peacockian style, “conversation” becomes the mode for the elegant display, dramatization, and contestation of ideas. In this as well as his other novels, Peacock's characters range widely and easily among a variety of political, intellectual, and artistic topics. Fax and Forester, in this scene, anatomize and dispute the state of human society. Among the many topics they discuss is the “principle” Malthus made infamous, the principle of population. As the following excerpt suggests, Fax and Forester address this principle, and its calculability, quite differently:

Mr. Fax.

The cause of all the evils of human society is single, obvious, reducible to the most exact mathematical calculation; and of course susceptible not only of remedy, but even of utter annihilation. The cause is the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. The remedy is an universal social contract, binding both sexes to equally rigid celibacy, till the prospect of maintaining the average number of six children be as clear as the arithmetic of futurity can make it.

Mr. Forester.

The arithmetic of futurity has been found in a more than equal number of instances to baffle human skill. The rapid and sudden mutations of fortune are the inexhaustible theme of history, poetry, and romance …

Type
Chapter
Information
Romanticism and the Human Sciences
Poetry, Population, and the Discourse of the Species
, pp. 109 - 158
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×