Research Catalog

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

Title: Victorian demons : medicine, masculinity and the Gothic at the fin-de-siècle / Andrew Smith.
Author: Smith, Andrew, 1964-
Publication: Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2004.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	PR461 .S647 2004	Off-site

Details

Description

191 pages : illustrations

Summary

"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."--Publisher's description.

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [182]-188) and index.

Contents

Degeneration, masculinity, nationhood and the Gothic -- Pathologising the gothic: the elephant man, the hysteric, the Indian and the doctor -- The Whitechapel murders: journalism, gothic London, and the medical gaze -- Reading syphilis: the politics of disease -- Displacing masculinity: Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula, and London -- Performing masculinity: Wilde's art.

ISBN

9780719063565
0719063566
9780719063572
0719063574

LCCN

2004426530

OCLC

ocm54826865
54826865
SCSB-14503469

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library