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The Evolutionary Sublime: Deep Time and the Historical Novel in Joan Thomas's Curiosity

Abstract:Joan Thomas's novel Curiosity focusses on the period when fossil discoveries were overturning conceptions about humanity's place in history. It considers how early evolutionary theory positioned subjects vis-à-vis questions of historicity and scale. Yet the concept of deep time disallows the continuum between past and present on which the historical novel insists. Curiosity embodies this paradox through its focus on the incommensurability of human history and deep time.