DOCSLIB.ORG

The “Nightmare” of Collecting Egyptian Antiquities in Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The “Nightmare” of Collecting Egyptian Antiquities in Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction University of Alberta The “Nightmare” of Collecting Egyptian Antiquities in Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction by Leigh Dyrda A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English and Film Studies ©Leigh Dyrda Spring 2012 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission. Library and Archives Bibliothèque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-89532-0 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-89532-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette thèse. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformément à la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privée, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont été enlevés de thesis. cette thèse. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Abstract This dissertation examines a selection of Gothic fiction published in Britain between roughly 1880 and 1910 that portrays the collection of Egyptian antiquities. Using the methodologies of new historicism, Gothic literary criticism, and critical museum studies, I argue that these late-Victorian representations of collecting Egyptian objects dramatize displaced cultural anxiety about the Empire during the phase of New Imperialism. The mummies and antiquities in these texts are threatening, supernaturally live, and dangerous; I read their violence against British collectors and museums as a strategy of negotiating late-century imperial anxiety about the longevity of Britain’s Empire and the strength of “Britishness” as represented through Gothic house-museums, knowledge production, immunity to foreign “contagion,” and sexual dominance and “purity.” Ultimately, I suggest, these texts together demonstrate an intense fictional expression of Victorian cultural disenchantment. Writing this project would not have been possible without the support of my family, friends, and colleagues. My intense outpouring of affection cannot be properly communicated on these pages. Thank you all! I owe a large debt of gratitude to Dr. Peter Sinnema, whose rigour pushed me beyond what I thought I could write. Thanks also to Dr. Katherine Binhammer and Dr. Mark Simpson, for years of diligence and enthusiasm in commenting on my work. This committee’s comments on my work have always been thorough, thought-provoking, and invaluable. I greatly appreciate Dr. Steven Bruhm and Dr. Robert Burch for taking time out of their busy schedules to participate in the defense. This process has been rewarding for me in ways immeasurable; thank you for your careful and insightful comments. My life has been forever enriched by my beloved friends, old and new: Judith Anderson, Neale Barnholden, Mary Chan, Becky Hardie, Charn Jagpal, Tessa Jordan, Mary Overholt, Geordie Patterson, Jillian Richardson, Michelle Lovegrove Thomson, and Dana Wight, you have all made life worth living here in E-town. To Jill, Charn, and Geordie: your comments on my work over the last three years have enabled me to write a better thesis than I ever dreamed possible. My greatest appreciation and love goes out to my family: Joan Dyrda, Glen Dyrda, Jeff Dyrda, and Keith Dyrda. Quite literally, none of this would be possible without your support. My wonderful brothers, Jeff and Keith, inspire me with the commitment they show to their music and to our family. My amazing parents, Joan and Glen, have loved and encouraged me at every step of this journey, even when the path veered off the road and into the bush. You have always been convinced that I could succeed at anything I tried; I feel incredibly blessed to have such devotees. My success is your success. I am also grateful for the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Alberta, and the Department of English and Film Studies. Funding from these institutions made this research possible. Table of Contents Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 1 The “Nightmare” of Egypt: Collecting, Objects, and Literary Survivals Chapter 1 …………………………………………………………………… 34 The Victorian Gothic Museum in Short Fiction: “The Nemesis of Fire,” “The Story of Baelbrow,” and “Lot 249” Chapter 2 …………………………………………………………………… 72 Mummy Run Amok: Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars and the Fantasy of Knowledge Chapter 3…………………………………………………………………… 115 The Plague of Egypt: The Mummy’s Curse in Guy Boothby’s Pharos, the Egyptian Chapter 4 ………………………………………………………………… 152 Nightmares of Sexual Desire: Theo Douglas’s Iras, a Mystery, and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle Conclusion ………………………………………………………………… 187 Imperial Decline and Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction Introduction The “Nightmare” of Egypt: Collecting, Objects, and Literary Survivals During the first few decades of the nineteenth century, the British Museum vastly extended its collections of Egyptian antiquities and made them available for viewing to the public. The Museum had begun collecting Egyptian mummies, shabtis, sarcophagi, stela, and small sculptures in the 1750s, and acquired most objects at that time through private donation.1 Following Lord Nelson’s defeat of Napoleon in the Battle of Aboukir in 1798, and subsequent British military confiscation of the French trove of Egyptian antiquities, the British Museum, as well as smaller civic museums and individual collectors, began to collect the objects of this ancient civilization in earnest. Britain was in the grips of a new ‘Egyptomania,’ a craze for all things Egyptian, one that would intensify throughout the century. By 1840, visitors to the British Museum could view such Egyptian statuary as the seated statue of Seti II and the colossal bust of Ramesses II, and such colourful sarcophagi as those of Hornedjtyitif and Denytenamun.2 Egyptian-inspired architecture and interior design came into vogue, best shown by William Bullock’s Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly Street, which opened in 1812, and was modeled on the tombs discovered at Dendera (Curl 260). 1 Mummies are embalmed corpses; shabtis are small statues customarily buried with bodies; sarcophagi are stone or wooden coffins, usually intricately carved or detailed; stela are inscribed pieces of stone. 2 These statues and antiquities were purchased from Henry Salt between 1823 and 1835. 1 Yet the sudden appreciation for the goods of Egypt was mixed with an intense trepidation. In an 1826 guide to the British Museum, an anonymous author describes the statuary in the Egyptian exhibit: The forms of Egyptian sculpture are, in their general character, like those which we see in feverish dreams, and which haunt us in that nervous affection called the night-mare; and these latter are [...] more unlike anything belonging to the real world than we could possibly imagine in our waking hours. In a word, Egyptian sculpture, properly so called, like the annals of the country which produced it, and the associations which we are accustomed to connect with those annals and that country, more resembles a phantasma and a dream than a reality. (30-31) More than the anthropomorphic statuary of Classical ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome, the objects of Egypt were received by museum-goers in the nineteenth century as examples of the nightmarish and strange, the supernatural and fantastic. Similar attitudes towards imported Egyptian antiquities appear in numerous print sources during this period. An article in the Times in 1802, announced
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Fiction of Gothic Egypt and British Imperial Paranoia: the Curse of the Suez Canal
    The Fiction of Gothic Egypt and British Imperial Paranoia: The Curse of the Suez Canal AILISE BULFIN Trinity College, Dublin “Ah, my nineteenth-century friend, your father stole me from the land of my birth, and from the resting place the gods decreed for me; but beware, for retribution is pursuing you, and is even now close upon your heels.” —Guy Boothby, Pharos the Egyptian, 1899 What of this piercing of the sands? What of this union of the seas?… What good or ill from LESSEPS’ cut Eastward and Westward shall proceed? —“Latest—From the Sphinx,” Punch, 57 (27 November 1869), 210 IN 1859 FERDINAND DE LESSEPS began his great endeavour to sunder the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, the Occident with the Orient, simultaneously altering the ge- ography of the earth and irrevocably upsetting the precarious global balance of power. Ten years later the eyes of the world were upon Egypt as the Suez Canal was inaugurated amidst extravagant Franco-Egyp- tian celebrations in which a glittering cast of international dignitar- ies participated. That the opening of the canal would be momentous was acknowledged at the time, though the nature of its impact was a matter for speculation, as the question posed above by Punch implies. While its codevelopers France and Egypt pinned great hopes on the ca- nal, Britain was understandably suspicious of an endeavor that could potentially undermine its global imperial dominance—it would bring India nearer, but also make it more vulnerable to rival powers. The inauguration celebrations
    [Show full text]
  • The Eye of Horus & the Hamsa Hand
    Egypt in Western Popular Culture From Bram Stoker to The Jewel of the Nile Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka Abstract In April 2011, Western eyes were fixed on Egypt. Many were astounded when Hosni Mubarack, who had presented himself as the anti-colonial hero who nationalized the Suez Canal, was ousted by a popular uprising after thirty years of authoritarian rule. The subsequent waves of political protests sweeping over the Arab world put in evidence the complexities of the historical background, and brought attention to the long shadows of a not-so-distant violent past. For Europe and North America, there was something else about Egypt. Culturally, the West had absorbed Egypt onto its collective memory as the gate to the Near East since the nineteenth century. Casablanca and Hong Kong had been pied a terres, but Cairo, in a way that not even Byzantium had ever managed, was home. Egypt has been embedded in Western consciousness for the last two centuries, and its ancient, pharaonic past has reinvigorated the store of myth of Europe and North America to an immeasurable extent. The present essay is concerned with the discreet but powerful interventions of Western popular culture in translating Egypt for Western consumption, both building and resisting stereotypes. The essay considers Bram Stoker’s novel of 1903, The Jewel of Seven Stars, which solidified many of those stereotypes, and goes on to discuss three popular renderings of Egypt produced around a hundred years later, which rewrite those stereotypes from within: the film The Jewel of the Nile (1985), the novel The Map of Love (1999), and the documentary The Hidden History of Egypt (2002).
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction: Reading Beyond Dracula 1 Hall Caine, 'Bram Stoker
    Introduction: Reading beyond Dracula 1 Hall Caine, 'Bram Stoker. The Story of a Great Friendship', The Daily Telegraph, 24 April 1912, p. 16. 2 'Death of Mr. Bram Stoker. Sir H. Irving's Manager', The Daily Telegraph, 22 April 1912, p. 6; Caine, 'Bram Stoker', p. 16; 'Obituary. Mr. Bram Stoker', The Times, 22 April 1912, p. 15. A fldus Achates is a faithful companion or bosom friend, the allusion being to Virgil's Aeneid. The term is used to describe Bram Stoker by The Times and recurs in a further obituary: 'Bram Stoker', The New York Times, 23 April 1912, p. 12. 3 Caine, 'Bram Stoker', p. 16. 4 'Merry-go-Round', The Entr'acte, 23 September 1882, p. 4. 5 Bram Stoker, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, 2 vols (London: William Heinemann, 1906) Vol. 1, p. ix (Hereafter PRHI). 6 Caine, 'Bram Stoker', p. 16. 7 Stoker records an eclectic selection of guests at Lyceum First Nights in the first volume of his biography of Irving. The list, which is arranged through­ out in two columns, occupies an astonishing eleven single-spaced pages. Though a few women - most notably Genevieve Ward, Lady Gregory, Sarah Bernhardt and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts - feature in their own right, the majority are listed merely as the partners of their distinguished husbands (PRHI I 315-26). For information on the masculine culture of London in the period see Pamela Horn, High Society: The English Social Elite 1880-1914 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992) pp. 24-9, 147-51. 8 Maurice Richardson, 'The Psychoanalysis of Ghost Stories', The Twentieth Century 166 (1959) 419-31 at p.
    [Show full text]
  • Daughters of Lilith: Transgressive Femininity in Bram Stoker’S Late Gothic Fiction
    Université de Montréal Daughters of Lilith: Transgressive Femininity in Bram Stoker’s Late Gothic Fiction par Brigitte Boudreau Département d’études anglaises Faculté des arts et des sciences Thèse présentée à la Faculté des études supérieures en vue de l’obtention du grade de Philosophiæ Doctor (Ph.D.) en études anglaises Mars 2014 ©Brigitte Boudreau, 2014 i Résumé Daughters of Lilith: Transgressive Femininity in Bram Stoker’s Late Gothic Fiction explore le thème de la transgression féminine dans quatre romans gothiques de Bram Stoker. En combinant les études féministes et les études de genre, cette thèse examine les différents visages de la dissidence féminine à travers Dracula (1897), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), The Lady of the Shroud (1909) et The Lair of the White Worm (1911). Dans ces textes, la transgression est incarnée par la femme hystérique, la mère monstrueuse, la femme exotique et la New Woman. De plus, le traitement de ces stéréotypes féminins révèle une certaine tolérance envers la dissension féminine chez l’auteur. Souvent perçu comme un écrivain conservateur, Stoker est plutôt qualifié de progressiste dans cette thèse. L’inclusion de personnages féminins forts et déterminés à travers ses romans ainsi que ses rapports avec plusieurs féministes et proto-féministes dans sa vie privée témoignent de sa libéralité envers les femmes. Sa largeur d’esprit semble d’ailleurs évoluer tout au long de sa carrière ainsi qu’avec la progression du mouvement suffragiste britannique, une période mouvante à la fin du dix-neuvième et au début du vingtième siècle. Mots clés: Bram Stoker, littérature gothique, transgression feminine, femme hystérique, mère monstrueuse, femme exotique, New Woman ii Abstract Daughters of Lilith: Transgressive Femininity in Bram Stoker’s Late Gothic Fiction explores the theme of feminine dissidence in four of Stoker’s Gothic novels.
    [Show full text]
  • Science, Magic and Ancient Egypt in Late Victorian and Edwardian
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository SCIENCE, MAGIC AND ANCIENT EGYPT IN LATE VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN LITERATURE by ELEANOR DOBSON A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of M.A. by Research Department of English College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham September 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis investigates the ways in which science and magic were brought together in fiction of the fin de siècle concerning ancient Egypt, in the works of popular including Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli. Notions of authenticity and artifice, fact and fiction, antiquity and modernity collided in the late nineteenth- century metropolis, where London’s academic institutions, occult organisations and theatrical exhibits of Egyptiana sat side by side. Writers who lived in this central hub are examined in relation to this unique geographical space that encouraged a sense of intimacy between these concepts. The influence of scientific discoveries demonstrated in the city’s lecture halls, including remarkable electrical phenomena, and occult undertakings such as Spiritualist séances, are traced within literature.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Birmingham Ruby Lips and Whitby
    University of Birmingham Ruby Lips and Whitby Jet Dobson, Eleanor DOI: 10.7227/GS.0039 License: None: All rights reserved Document Version Peer reviewed version Citation for published version (Harvard): Dobson, E 2018, 'Ruby Lips and Whitby Jet: Dracula's Language of Jewels', Gothic Studies, vol. 20, no. 1-2, pp. 124-139. https://doi.org/10.7227/GS.0039 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal Publisher Rights Statement: Accepted for publication in Gothic Studies, publication forthcoming. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in: [Author(s)], [year], [Title of article], [Journal], [Volume number]: [Issue number], [page number]–[page number], DOI: http:dx.doi.org/10.7227/XXXX © [year] Author(s). Published by Manchester University Press. General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain. Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document.
    [Show full text]
  • Bram Stoker's the Lady of the Shroud : Supernatural Fantasy, Politics, Montenegro and Its Double
    Bram Stoker's The lady of the shroud : supernatural fantasy, politics, Montenegro and its double HOPKINS, Lisa <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9512-0926> Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/8378/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version HOPKINS, Lisa (2014). Bram Stoker's The lady of the shroud : supernatural fantasy, politics, Montenegro and its double. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 57 (4), 519-534. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk Montenegro and its Double: Bram Stoker’s The Lady of the Shroud In 1909 Bram Stoker set out to recreate the success of Dracula with another novel about a vampire, The Lady of the Shroud. However, this time the book performed a narrative and generic volte-face in which the seeming vampire was revealed to be in fact a living girl reduced to sleeping in a coffin for political rather than supernatural reasons. As a result, a book which had begun with a high Gothic encounter between living and seemingly dead concludes with a celebration of the newly established Balkan Federation, which has been brokered by the hero, the charismatic seven-foot tall Irishman Rupert Sent Leger, who has won both the crown of the Land of the Blue Mountains and the hand of the lovely Teuta, that being the name of the girl in the coffin.
    [Show full text]
  • The Project Gutenberg E-Text of the Jewel of Seven Stars, by Bram Stoker
    The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker 1912 Edition This story was brought to you by: www.bramstoker.org This document is in the Public Domain To Eleanor and Constance Hoyt Chapter I A Summons in the Night It all seemed so real that I could hardly imagine that it had ever occurred before; and yet each episode came, not as a fresh step in the logic of things, but as something expected. It is in such a wise that memory plays its pranks for good or ill; for pleasure or pain; for weal or woe. It is thus that life is bittersweet, and that which has been done becomes eternal. Again, the light skiff, ceasing to shoot through the lazy water as when the oars flashed and dripped, glided out of the fierce July sunlight into the cool shade of the great drooping willow branches—I standing up in the swaying boat, she sitting still and with deft fingers guarding herself from stray twigs or the freedom of the resilience of moving boughs. Again, the water looked golden-brown under the canopy of translucent green; and the grassy bank was of emerald hue. Again, we sat in the cool shade, with the myriad noises of nature both without and within our bower merging into that drowsy hum in whose sufficing environment the great world with its disturbing trouble, and its more disturbing joys, can be effectually forgotten. Again, in that blissful solitude the young girl lost the convention of her prim, narrow upbringing, and told me in a natural, dreamy way of the loneliness of her new life.
    [Show full text]
  • Bram Stoker's Dracula and the Gothic Tradition Bram Stoker I S· Dracula
    BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA AND THE GOTHIC TRADITION BRAM STOKER I S· DRACULA AND THE GOTHIC TRADITION By DAVID GATES B.A. A THESIS Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University September 1976 MASTER OF ARTS (1976) McMASTER UNIVERSITY (English) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Bram Stoker's DYa'cu'la and the Gothic Tradition AUTHOR:' David Gates B.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Joseph Sigman NUMBER OF PAGES: iv, 112 . , .\ ii I wish to thank Dr. Joseph Sigman for all his help and encouragement in the writing of the thesis. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ·....... .. 1 CHAPTER ONE ••••• •• .•••••••• 9 CHAPTER TWO ·... ... ....... 31 CHAPTER THREE • • 0 •••••••••••• 65 CONCLUSION ... .. .... .. .106 BIBLIOGRAPHY . ......... .. ....109 iv Introduction Although in his time, Bram Stoker was a theatre critic, a civil servant, a newspaper editor, an author of novels and short stories and the business manager for the famous actor Sir Henry Irving, he is known today primarily as the creator of Dracula. The fame of this novel, one of the greatest works of horror fiction, has tended to eclipse both its author and his other writing. There is no ques­ tion, however, that Dracula is Stoker's masterpiece. It is also the last great Gothic novel. Written over seventy years after the peak of the Gothic movement, Dracula is a revival of the style and form perfected by Ann Radcliffe, Matthew "Monk" Lewis and Charles Robert Maturin. Although the era of the Gothic novel had ended long before Stoker began his writing career, its influence can be seen clearly in his work and that of many of his contemporaries, includ­ ing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson.
    [Show full text]
  • Time and the Shifting Bog in Bram Stoker's the Snake's Pass
    Daemen College Daemen Digital Commons Faculty & Staff choS larship 2017 "Keeping the Past Present": Time and the Shifting Bog in Bram Stoker’s The nS ake’s Pass Nancy Marck Cantwell Daemen College Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.daemen.edu/faculty_scholar Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Cantwell, N. M. (2017). "Keeping the past present": Time and the shifting bog in Bram Stoker’s The nS ake’s Pass. Supernatural Studies,4(1), 38-50. This paper is posted at Daemen Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.daemen.edu/faculty_scholar/19 For more information, please contact [email protected]. "'Keeping the Past Present': Time and the Shifting Bog in Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass" By Nancy Marck Cantwell This article made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Supernatural Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 2017, pp. 38-50. Supernatural Studies 38 Keeping the Past Present : Time and the Shifting Bog in Bram Stoker s Nancy Marck Cantwell Bram Stoker s Irish novel, The Snake s Pass, interrogates the continuity of Irish history and national identity through a legend explaining a Connemara bog s supernatural influence, a story that portrays the trauma of Ireland s dispossession as indelible and timeless. This reading of the novel employs Julia Kristeva s conceptualization of linear and monumental time to argue for the preeminence of the supernatural bog as a totem of Irish identity that persists in cultural memory to counter the forward momentum of the Anglo-Irish assimilation narrative. Keywords: bog, Bram Stoker, dispossession, Ireland, Julia Kristeva In Bram Stoker s The Snake s Pass (1890), Ireland first appears a depopulated land of ruins, lost treasure, and shifting boglands, as readers encounter the western counties from an inexperienced English touristic perspective narrator Arthur Severn quickly becomes entangled in a mystery surrounding the legend of a supernatural snake and a horde of gold hidden in a shifting bog, even as he courts local beauty Norah Joyce.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Bram Stoker's Gothic and the Resources of Science Glennis
    Bram Stoker's Gothic and the Resources of Science Glennis Byron, University of Stirling In a 1909 article for the North American Review on 'The American “Tramp" Question', Bram Stoker turns his attention to the issue of vagrancy and urges the necessity of swift action to deal with the ever increasing problem of the 'wilfully-idle class' (Stoker 1909: 613). 'When certain persons – or classes of persons – are manifestly dangerous to the more peaceful and better-ordered classes of communities', he declares, 'it is the essence of good government – indeed, a necessary duty to responsible officials – to keep them in restraint, or certainly under observation' (612). There is consequently a need for some means of identifying these 'undesirable' characters, so that they can easily be located and detained in order to be taught to be industrious. Anticipating the introduction of GPS (Global Positioning System) or electronic tagging, he suggests that while the primitive system of 'ear-marking with a "hot yron"' may not be acceptable to the modern age, 'surely the resources of science are equal to some method of personal marking of an indelible quality' (614). Stoker's interest in the 'resources of science', pure and applied, is evident throughout both his non-fictional and fictional works. 1 He engages with a wide variety of the sciences and social sciences of his day and the debates they engendered, including archaeology, anthropology, geology, physics, chemistry, criminal anthropology, and mental physiology or early psychiatry. His characters are themselves frequently scientists of one kind or 1 another, and usually have all the latest gadgets and inventions placed at their disposal, from bicycles to automobiles to aeroplanes, and from Krupp cannons to Winchester rifles.
    [Show full text]
  • The Scientific Supernatural in the Fin De Siècle Novel
    The Scientific Supernatural in the Fin de Siècle Novel By Kathryn Viola Magaña A thesis Submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington 2019 2 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I wish to offer my sincere thanks to my supervisors, Anna Jackson and Nikki Hessell, for their patience through the many shifts this thesis has taken and for countless readings of chapters. Your direction, comments, and willingness to read some truly strange novels has made this possible; thank you for your dedication to this project. Additionally, thanks to Charles Ferrall for helping to get me started on this journey and Adam Grener for the discussions on Victorian novels and job hunting in America. Catherine, thanks for talking your parents into adopting me into the family when needed and Margie for genuinely welcoming me into your family. This process has been much more fun with friends on the ninth floor. With gratitude, I would like to thank: Victoria University of Wellington for the Victoria Doctoral Scholarship which funded most of my time working on this thesis, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for a grant which helped to fund an archival research and conference presentations trip to United States in 2015 and a second conference presentation in Dunedin in 2016, and Phi Kappa Phi for the “Love of Learning Award” which contributed to tuition costs. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my family, friends, and countless other people who will likely never see this but were instrumental in my getting this far.
    [Show full text]