The Art of Uncertainty

The Victorian novel developed unique forms of reasoning under uncertainty-of thinking, judging, and acting in the face of partial knowledge and unclear outcome. George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, William Thackeray, Thomas Hardy, and later Joseph Conrad drew on science, mathematics, philosophy, and the law to articulate a phenomenology of uncertainty against emergent models of prediction and decision-making. In imaginative explorations of unsure reasoning, hesitant judgment, and makeshift action, these novelists cultivated distinctive responses to uncertainty as intellectual concern and cultural disposition, participating in the knowledge work of an era shaped by numerical approaches to the future. Reading for uncertainty yields a rich account of the dynamics of thinking and acting, a fresh understanding of realism as a genre of the probable, and a vision of literary-critical judgment as provisional and open-ended. Daniel Williams spotlights the value of literary art in a present marked by models and technologies of prediction.

'A strong addition to the series, and it will be stimulating for advanced readers who enjoy studying the evolving form of the novel … Highly recommended.' S. A. Parker, CHOICE

Daniel Williams is Assistant Professor of Literature at Bard College. He was previously a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. His research focuses on British and South African literature, scientific and intellectual history, and the environmental humanities. He is co-editor of a special issue of Poetics Today on 'Logic and Literary Form' (2020), and a section editor for Literature Compass.

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