Anachrony, Neoteny and the ‘Education of an Amphibian’ in Eyeless in Gaza

This chapter examines the only Bildungsroman written by Aldous Huxley, one of foremost modernist advocates of Bildung, and one of its most intimately linked with contemporary biology. Reviewers and critics have long struggled to make sense of the disorienting and seemingly unmotivated use of anachrony in Eyeless in Gaza, which I attribute to Huxley’s careful study of biological studies by his brother Julian (among others) on the embryology, endocrinology, and evolutionary biology of frogs and salamanders. Central to Huxley’s search for full, harmonious development is the phenomenon of neoteny (the retention of juvenile characteristics into sexual maturity); once interpreted as a pathological failure of development, neoteny was by the 1920s heralded as the biological key to human evolutionary and social success.