This thesis is concerned with the importance of the gaze in fin-de-siecle Gothic. One of the ways in which the importance of the gaze manifests itself is in the central role of the onlooker like Enfield, Utterson or Lanyon in Robert Louis Stevenson's Stange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Prendick In H.G. Well's Island of Dr Moreau (1896), or Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). As their appelation suggests, Wells's Beast Men confound the distinction between the human and the animal, which is also the case with 'Beast Men' like Hyde and Dracula. A central concern of the thisis is the perceptual drama that is involved in looking at the spectacle of the monstrous body, for excample, as the onlooker struggles to get to grips with the challenge to representation posed by these 'Beast Men'.

Die Dissertation führt den Begriff des Schauerrealismus (gothic realism) als Werkzeug zur Analyse explizit politischer Gegenwartsliteratur ein. Hierbei thematisiert die Arbeit die kulturelle Arbeit des realistischen Gegenwartsromans und begreift Konventionen der Schauerliteratur als Ausdrucksmittel politischer Aktualität und als kulturelle Marker einer als krisenhaft empfundenen Gegenwart. Gleichzeitig leistet die Arbeit so einen kritischen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Periodisierungsdebatte im Bereich der amerikanischen Literatur, indem sie an Hand detaillierter Fallstudien die literarische Methodik und kulturell-politische Arbeit realistischer Romane herausarbeitet, die sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen einem Selbstbekenntnis zum Realismus und dem bewussten Einsatz von Konventionen klassischer Schauerliteratur einer klaren Periodisierungsabsicht entziehen. Basierend auf einem Textkorpus der Romane The Dead Zone und Cujo von Stephen King schlägt die Arbeit den Bogen zum gegenwärtigen realistischen Werk von Cara Hoffman und Julia Keller, um herauszuarbeiten, wie schauerliterarische Tropen als realistisches Ausdrucksmittel einen essentiellen Beitrag zur politischen und kulturellen Arbeit amerikanischer Gegenwartsliteratur leisten. / The dissertation introduces the term “gothic realism“ as a tool to analyze explicitly political contemporary literature. The work discusses the cultural work of the realist contemporary novel and conceptualizes conventions of gothic fiction as a means to express political actuality and as an indicator of a zeitgeist characterized by crisis. At the same time, the work critically contributes to the current periodization debate in American literature by offering detailed readings of the literary method and cultural work of realist novels that veer between a self-professed realism and the explicit use of gothic convention. By doing so, these texts escape clear efforts of periodization. Based on the Stephen King novels The Dead Zone and Cujo, the work theorizes and reads contemporary novels by Cara Hoffman and Julia Keller to show how tropes of gothic fiction as a realist means of representation fundamentally contribute to the cultural and political work of contemporary American literature.

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.

A presente pesquisa é fruto da observação de uma tendência recorrente nas cinematografias brasileira e argentina nos primeiro 16 anos do século XXI, qual seja, um estilo que deriva da combinação de princípios de uma estética realista com elementos característicos do horror. Gostaríamos de sugerir que essa mistura criativa de processos de linguagem, tradicionalmente díspares, cria uma atmosfera sensória de tensões e suspenses que se liga com aspectos psicológicos e subjetivos de um momento histórico particular ao Brasil e à Argentina. Isso ocorre principalmente em obras que, dentro desta tendência, expressam o tensionamento de diferentes segmentos sociais e se inspiram em um estilo vinculado ao imaginário gótico. A fim de demarcar essa atmosfera de medo em filmes realistas brasileiros e argentinos, realizaremos uma análise dos motivos temáticos, das ambiências e estados climáticos nos longas-metragens O som ao redor (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2013) e Bem perto de Buenos Aires (Historia del Miedo, Benjamín Naishtat, 2014). / The present research is the result of the observation of a recurring tendency in Brazilian and Argentinean cinematography in the first 16 years of the 21st century, that is, a style that derives from the combination of elements of a realistic aesthetic with characteristic horror elements. We would like to suggest that this creative blend of traditionally disparate language processes creates a sensory atmosphere of tensions and suspensions that is linked with psychological and subjective aspects of a particular historical moment in Brazil and Argentina. This occurs mainly in works that, within this tendency, express a tension of different social segments and are inspired by a style linked to the Gothic imaginary. Through the analysis of thematic motifs, ambiences and climatic states, the research will draw a comparison between the films O Som ao Redor (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2013) e Bem perto de Buenos Aires (Historia del Miedo, Benjamín Naishtat, 2014).

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

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.

This study explores the construction of the Gothic female body in three films by the director Tim Burton, specifically Batman Returns (1992), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Dark Shadows (2012). Through a deployment of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, the intention is to indicate the degree to which Burton crafts his leading female characters as abject Others and embodiments of Barbara Creed’s ‘monstrous-feminine’. In this Gothic portrayal, the director consistently draws on the essentialised stereotypes of Woman as either ‘virgin’ or ‘whore’ as he shapes his Gothic heroines and femmes fatales. While a gendered duality is established, this is destabilised to an extent, as Burton permits his female characters varying degrees of agency as they acquire monstrous traits. This construction of Woman as monster, this study will show, is founded on a certain fear of femaleness, so reinstating the ideology of Woman as Other. / English Studies / M.A. (English Studies)

No description available.

From the first electric lights in London along Pall Mall, and in the Holborn Viaduct in 1878 to the nationalisation of National Grid in 1947, the narrative of the simple ascendency of a new technology over its outdated predecessor is essential to the way we have imagined electric light in London at the end of the nineteenth century. However, as this thesis will demonstrate, the interplay between gas and electric light - two co-existing and competing illuminary technologies - created a particular and peculiar landscape of light, a 'lightscape', setting London apart from its contemporaries throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed, this narrative forms the basis of many assertions made in critical discussions of artificial illumination and technology in the late-twentieth century; however, this was not how electric light was understood at the time nor does it capture how electric light both captivated and eluded the imagination of contemporary Londoners. The influence of the electric light in the representations of London is certainly a literary question, as many of those writing during this period of electrification are particularly attentive to the city's rich and diverse lightscape. Though this has yet to be made explicit in existing scholarship, electric lights are the nexus of several important and ongoing discourses in the study of Victorian, Post-Victorian, Modernist, and twentieth-century literature. This thesis will address how the literary influence of the electric light and its relationship with its illuminary predecessors transcends the widespread electrification of London to engage with an imaginary London, providing not only a connection with our past experiences and conceptions of the city, modernity, and technology but also an understanding of what Frank Mort describes as the 'long cultural reach of the nineteenth century into the post-war period'.