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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.
Sommario
Introduction; Part I. The Gothic Material World: 1. The revenge of matter; 2. Symptomatic readings; Part II. Gothic Bodies: 3. Evolutionism and the loss of human specificity; 4. Entropic bodies; 5. Chaotic bodies; Part III. Gothic Sexualities: 6. Uncanny female interiors; 7. Abjected masculinities; Afterword; 8. Narrative chaos.
Riassunto
This book accounts for the resurgence of Gothic, and its immense popularity, during the British fin de siècle. Kelly Hurley explores a key scenario that haunts the genre - the loss of a unified and stable human identity - and reveals the links between the Gothic body and nineteenth-century scientific and social theories.
