The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)

by Kelly Hurley

Readers familiar with Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde may not know that dozens of equally remarkable Gothic texts were written in Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth-century. 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 the emergence of a chaotic and transformative 'abhuman' identity in its place. She shows that such representations of Gothic bodies 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.

• ISBN13: 9780521552592
• Publish Date: 5 December 1996 (first published 1 January 1996)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 6 June 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Cambridge University Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 220
• Language: English

Reviews

[celinenyx]

The Gothic Body is a fantastic analysis of Gothic literature and the way it treats the human body. In these stories, people are often confronted with horrific man-eating abominations, tearing apart humans indiscriminately. Hurley traces this back to scientific developments in the nineteenth century, most notably Darwinism. She argues that it is the darkest implications of Darwinism, that the human form is a mere coincidence rather than a stable shape, that fuels the gothic narratives. The book features lovely analyses on a variety of topics - including slime, sexuality, and the modern city - covering many different Gothic stories.