The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Dec. 18, 2009). Thesis advisor: Dr. Devoney Looser. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

In February 1997, the concept of the clone, previously confined to the pages of fiction, became reality when Dolly the sheep was introduced to the world. The response to this was unprecedented, initiating a discourse on cloning that permeated a range of cultural forms, including literature, film and television. My thesis examines and evaluates this discourse through analysis of contemporary fiction, including Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005), Stefan Brijs's The Angel Maker (2008), Duncan Jones's Moon (2009), and BBC America's current television series Orphan Black, which first aired in 2013. Such texts are placed in their cultural and historical setting, drawing comparisons between pre- and post-Dolly texts. The thesis traces the progression of the clone from an inhuman science fiction monster, to more of a tragic "human" creature. The clone has, however, retained its fictional portrayal as "other," be that double, copy or manufactured being, and the thesis argues that the clone is a Gothic trope for our times. The roots of the cloning discourse often lie in Gothic narratives, particularly Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), which is analysed as a canonical cloning text. Each chapter focuses on a source of fascination and fear within the cloning discourse: the influence of Gothic paternity on the figure of scientist; the notion of the clone as manufactured product, victim and monster; and the ethical and social implications of cloning. There is a dearth of critical analysis on the contemporary literary clone, with the most comprehensive study to date neither acknowledging the alignment of cloning and the Gothic nor demonstrating the impact of Dolly on fictional portrayals. My thesis addresses this, interweaving fiction, science and culture to present a monster which simultaneously embodies difference and sameness: a new monster for the twenty-first century.

Orientador: Aparecido Donizete Rossi / Banca: Karin Volobuef / Banca: Fernanda Aquino Sylvestre / Resumo: O presente trabalho tem o objetivo de promover relações teórico-críticas entre o conceito de palimpsesto cunhado por Gérard Genette, a definição de Texto desenvolvida por Roland Barthes e o gótico. Por meio da análise das releituras da história de Branca de Neve, "Snow, Glass, Apples", de Neil Gaiman, e "Branca dos Mortos e os Sete Zumbis", de Fábio Yabu, buscamos dar um novo olhar ao processo de revisitação de contos de fadas: pelo viés do gótico. Assim como o palimpsesto mostra sombras dos textos anteriores, a releitura possui sombras das obras que revisitam. Essas sombras são profundas, indo além das personagens, cenários e enredo que nos são familiares. A leitura analítica de uma releitura percebe as sombras das lacunas deixadas pelos contos de fadas. Entendemos que assim como uma releitura possui sombras de textos anteriores, algo unheimlich (FREUD, 2010) na temática ou estilo, o processo revisionista pode ser estruturalmente unheimlich. A leitura do processo revisionista como algo unheimlich, estruturalmente gótico, permite uma reflexão sobre as sombras que levaram os autores a reinterpretarem o conto da Branca de Neve da maneira que fizeram, além de ajudar a estabelecer as similaridades entre o conto de fadas e o gótico. Essas relações entre gêneros permitem discutir o teor gótico amplamente presente nas releituras de contos de fadas estudadas, possibilitando o entrelaçamento dos dois universos. Com base em teorias de Fred Botting, Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes, Gerárd... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research aims to promote theoretical-critical relations among the concept of palimpsest coined by Gérard Genette, the definition of Text developed by Roland Barthes, and the Gothic. By analyzing Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples", and "Branca dos Mortos e os Sete Zumbis" by Fábio Yabu, which are retellings of "Snow White", it is intent to give a new perspective to the process of retelling fairy tales: through the notion of gothic. Just as it is possible to discern shadows of previous texts in a palimpsest, the retellings carry shadows of the works it revisits. These shadows are deep, and go beyond familiar characters, scenarios and plot. The analytical reading of a retelling notices the shadows inside the fissures left by the fairy tales. It is believed that just as a retelling contains shadows of earlier texts that causes an unheimlich (FREUD, 2010) sensation in terms of theme or style, the retelling process structure can be unheimlich. Considering the retelling process as something unheimlich, or structurally Gothic, allows researchers to better understand the shadows that led the authors to retell Snow White tale in the way they did. In addition, it helps to establish the similarities between fairy tale and gothic. The relation between these genres promotes a wider discussion about the use of Gothic content in the fairy-tale retellings studied in this work, promoting the interweaving of both universes. Based on theories of Fred Botting, Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes,... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1988. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [266]-277).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Malinda Snow, committee chair; Murray Brown, Tanya Caldwell, committee members. Electronic text (223 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 11, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-223).

This thesis examines the Gothic element in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown and his influence on future writers.

This thesis examines the forms and functions of self-consciousness in contemporary Gothic fiction. Though self-consciousness is an often-mentioned characteristic of Gothic writing, it has yet to be explored in sufficient depth. In particular, critics have failed to recognise the manner in which the myriad forms of textual and generic self-reflexivity at work contribute to the fiction’s fearful agenda: how self-consciousness in the Gothic is itself Gothicised. This thesis argues that, rather than being an ancillary quirk of generic coherence or an indication of creative exhaustion, self-consciousness has become an integral part of the genre’s terroristic project, a new source and representational mode of terror. In the wake of postmodern and post-structural theory, the genre’s longstanding interest in reading, writing and textuality has been renewed, re-contextualised and redeployed as a key feature of the Gothic ‘effect’. My original contribution to knowledge is a charting of the intersections between the Gothic and this critical perspective on the text. In particular I explore how the Barthesian reorientation of the text is redeployed in Gothic fiction as a source of terror. Rather than pursuing an author-centric division of chapters I have organised the thesis around types of self-conscious commentary that occur throughout the contemporary Gothic. These are: a focus on the process of writing and textual composition; the internalisation and Gothicised representation of critical theory; an acute awareness and meta-commentary on the critical and commercial contexts of Gothic; and intertextuality. Key texts include Stephen King’s Misery (1987), Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted (2005), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005), R. M. Berry’s Frank (2005) and Peter Ackroyd’s The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008). This selection of texts is representative of a varied but coherent inward turn in the Gothic fiction of recent decades. It is, however, by no means exhaustive and supplementary evidence will be provided from additional texts. Equally, it is important to contextualise this contemporary turn in relation to an established vein of self-consciousness in the Gothic, present since its inception. As such, my approach is firstly to trace a lineage of reflexivity and to draw upon that tradition in demonstrating how contemporary Gothic writers have honed this technique to a uniquely terrifying purpose.

This dissertation asks: what has happened to the children and grandchildren of former industrial workers, those who came of age in the shadow of industrial ruination in the Rust Belt? It draws on 105 interviews with working-class descendants who grew up in or near the Mon Valley in Pennsylvania, to explore how those descendants engage with industrial ruins. For most, the ruins recalled the breakdown of the employer-employee social contract, a sense of betrayed tradition, and the current (abysmal) state of affairs for the working class. Most advocate for the destruction of the ruins, as the loss and failure embodied by industrial ruination acts as a trap, imprisoning them in the past. Their attempts to build a new working-class identity require letting go of industrial work and the memories of the lost past. For a wider range of perspectives, two other groups of descendants were interviewed—fifteen arsonists and four cultural producers (novelists). The arsonists, who set fire to abandoned buildings, draw on regional fire symbolism and maintain their inherited association between work and identity as they struggle to resurrect industry. The novelists, who have all published in the vein of American Gothic literature, are seeking to reinterpret the past to serve the needs of the present, using supernatural figures alongside ruins in their novels in order to allow the main characters to identify, recover, and reinterpret a hidden past, which allows for mourning and the formulation of a new class identity. Each of these groups of descendants is cobbling together different versions of working-class identity, but all show that navigation of economic restructuring is a process of continual transformation. Descendants’ imaginative constructions are emblems not of solidity or permanence, but rather revision and reinvention.

This project asserts that much of the cultural anxiety found in Gothic-infused late-Victorian fiction derives from literary revelations of the nested spaces, shifting identities, and spontaneous connections inherent to the late-Victorian metropolis. The three literary texts studied here – The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung, and The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan – all depict London as fundamentally suitable for those who seek to evade the disciplinary gaze and to pursue menacing schemes of criminality and invasion. Doyle’s text illustrates the interconnectedness of the spaces within London as well as the passable threshold between London and the English countryside; both the villain Stapleton and the hero Sherlock Holmes use these connections to attack and defend, respectively, the city and its inhabitants. Hornung’s stories depict the machinations employed by the gentleman-thief Raffles as he alters his identity and his codes of behaviour in order to free himself to pursue criminal ends and thus as he challenges cultural barriers. Buchan’s text, building on the others, explores the dissolution of cultural boundaries and identities incumbent upon the spontaneous connections made between those who attack English culture and those, like Richard Hannay, who defend it. There emerges in these texts a vision of London (and by extension Great Britain) as a swirling vortex of motion, an unknowable labyrinth perpetually threatened by menacing agents from without and within. I have employed Victor Turner’s theories of liminality and communitas to describe how criminal agents, and their equally menacing “good-guy” pursuers, separate themselves from structured society in order to move freely and to gain access to the contested thresholds they seek to infiltrate. I also invoke theories of the Gothic, surveillance, and travel, as well as Jeffrey Cohen’s monster theory, to characterize the anxiety embedded in such invasions. / The transformation of contested space : Baker Street, Grimpen Mire and the battle for thresholds in The hound of the Baskervilles -- Hornung's code-switching monster : threatening ambiguity and liminoid mobility in Raffles, the amateur cracksman -- Towards a more inclusive Britishness : Richard Hannay's transformative connections and evolving identity in The thrity-nine steps. / Department of English