The Gothic body : sexuality, materialism, and degeneration at the fin de siècle
Title:
The Gothic body : sexuality, materialism, and degeneration at the fin de siècle
Author:
Hurley, Kelly.
ISBN:
9781107784369
9780511821011
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (xii, 203 pages)
Series:
Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 8
Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 8.
Contents:
Introduction: The Abhuman -- The Gothic Material World. The revenge of matter. Symptomatic readings -- Gothic Bodies. Evolutionism and the loss of human specificity. Entropic bodies. Degenerate sub-species. Abjecting whiteness: H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. Chaotic bodies. The body as palimpsest. "Generalized animalism": Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau -- Gothic Sexualities. Uncanny female interiors. "The inner chambers of all nameless sin": Richard Marsh's The Beetle. Abjected masculinities. Narrative chaos. The Three Imposters: Arthur Machen's urban chaosmos.
Abstract:
This book accounts for the resurgence of Gothic, and its immense popularity, during the British fin de siecle. Kelly Hurley explores a key scenario that haunts the genre: the loss of a unified and stable human identity, and the emergence of a chaotic and transformative "abhuman" identity in its place. She shows that such representations of gothic bodices are strongly indebted to those found in nineteenth-century biology and social medicine, evolutionism, criminal anthropology, and degeneration theory. Gothic is revealed as a highly productive and speculative genre, standing in opportunistic relation to nineteenth-century scientific and social theories.
Subject Term:
Electronic Access:
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