Victorian demons: Medicine, masculinity, and the Gothic at the fin-de-siècle

by Andrew Smith

Overview

Victorian demons provides the first extensive exploration of largely middle-class masculinities in crisis at the fin de siècle. It analyses how ostensibly controlling models of masculinity became demonised in a variety of literary and medical contexts, revealing the period to be much more ideologically complex than has hitherto been understood, and makes a significant contribution to Gothic scholarship. Andrew Smith demonstrates how a Gothic language of monstrosity, drawn from narratives such as 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and 'Dracula', increasingly influenced a range of medical and cultural contexts, destabilising these apparently dominant masculine scripts. He provides a coherent analysis of a range of examples relating to masculinity drawn from literary, medical, legal and sociological contexts, including Joseph Merrick ('The Elephant Man'), the Whitechapel murders of 1888, Sherlock Holmes's London, the writings and trials of Oscar Wilde, theories of degeneration and medical textbooks on syphilis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526125576
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	52 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Andrew Smith is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Glamorgan
Andrew Smith is Professor of English Studies at the University of Glamorgan where he is Co-Director of the Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science (RCLAS)

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1 Degeneration, masculinity, nationhood and the Gothic Chapter 2 Pathologising the Gothic: The Elephant Man, the hysteric, the Indian and the doctor Chapter 3 The Whitechapel murders: Journalism, Gothic London, and the medical gaze Chapter 4 Reading syphilis: The politics of disease Chapter 5 Displacing masculinity: Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula, and London Chapter 6 Performing masculinity: Wilde's art Conclusion Biblography