DOCSLIB.ORG

DETECTIVE NARRATIVE and the PROBLEM of ORIGINS in 19 CENTURY ENGLAND by Amy Rebecca Murray Twyning Bachelor of Arts, West Chest

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
DETECTIVE NARRATIVE and the PROBLEM of ORIGINS in 19 CENTURY ENGLAND by Amy Rebecca Murray Twyning Bachelor of Arts, West Chest DETECTIVE NARRATIVE AND THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS IN 19TH CENTURY ENGLAND by Amy Rebecca Murray Twyning Bachelor of Arts, West Chester University, 1992 Master of Arts, West Virginia University, 1995 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The English Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2006 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH This dissertation was presented by Amy Rebecca Murray Twyning It was defended on March 1st, 2006 and approved by Marcia Landy, Distinguished University Service Professor, English Department, Film Studies, and the Cultural Studies Program James Seitz, Associate Professor, English Department Nancy Condee, Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literature and Director of the Program for Cultural Studies Dissertation Director: Colin MacCabe, Distinguished University Professor, English Literature, Film Studies, and the Cultural Studies Program ii Copyright © by Amy Rebecca Murray Twyning 2006 iii DETECTIVE NARRATIVE AND THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS IN 19TH CENTURY ENGLAND Amy Rebecca Murray Twyning, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2006 Working with Fredric Jameson’s understanding of genre as a “formal sedimentation” of an ideology, this study investigates the historicity of the detective narrative, what role it plays in bourgeois, capitalist culture, what ways it mediates historical processes, and what knowledge of these processes it preserves. I begin with the problem of the detective narrative’s origins. This is a complex and ultimately insoluble problem linked to the limits of historical perspective and compounded by the tendency of genres to erase their own origins. I argue that any critical reading of the detective story beginning with the notion that real crime and working class unrest are the specters that the detective story seeks to exorcise misapprehends the real class struggle that is evidenced in, but also disguised by, the detective story: the struggle between the ascendant (though never assuredly so) bourgeoisie and the receding (though, again, never assuredly so) aristocratic and post-feudal ruling classes. Instead, I argue that it is this class struggle that is apparent in the detective narrative’s special structure—the double structure by which it can pose any-origin-whatever as a moment of history and construct that history forward while appearing to uncover it backward. The detective narrative erases precisely the problem of the bourgeoisie’s lack of origins (from a feudal perspective) and counterfeits history. For this reason, I locate the detective narrative’s beginnings in specific sites where the transfer of power from traditional institutions to bourgeois institutions or institutions reformed by the bourgeoisie, including the Chancery court (in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House), the construction of the New Poor Laws of 1834 (in Wilkie Collins’ The Dead Secret), and marriage and inheritance in Bleak House and Collins’ The Moonstone. Ending with a study of the commonly acknowledged first detective novel, The Moonstone, I conclude that this novel and the generic paradigm of the detective narrative it exemplifies succeed in encrypting the historical discontinuity between post-feudal modes of production and capitalism and that, ultimately, crime is just an alibi for the work of historical reconstruction that the detective narrative carries out. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For sharing with me his imaginative power, for lighting so many unexplored passages with his incandescent intellect, and for living out with me the contraries by which we progress, I owe the deepest thanks to John Twyning. For her apparently inexhaustible generosity with her time, her perspicuity, and her genius, I am so grateful to Juli Parrish; she could always see the figure in the carpet. For teaching me Capital, for having faith in me, for respecting and yet never ceasing to argue with me, and for all the many other things that make him quintessentially himself and, therefore, an inspiration, I can only imperfectly express my thanks to Colin MacCabe. I thank Jean Grace for reading so many drafts with such attentiveness, for understanding the importance that one sentence or word can make to the process of creating, and for offering such encouragement. I thank Marcia Landy who may not know how important were the intellectual standards she set and the theoretical possibilities she illuminated to the creation of this project; I thank Marcia, also, for giving me Gramsci and Deleuze. I thank Jim Seitz for his generous support and his camaraderie and have learned from him what it means to love literature and writing. I thank Nancy Condee for her simultaneously generous and rigorous turn of mind, for the way she helped sharpen my thinking, and for the revelations I owe to her incisive wit. Geeta Kothari and Mark Kemp I thank for being my rock and my hard place. Thanks also go to Chris Boettcher for thinking along with me and being so imaginative and challenging. I also want to thank Mariolina Salvatori and Jonathan Arac, both of whom taught me how to read. Other professors whom I want to thank for their intellectual patronage are Tom Miles, Cheryl Torsney, and Dennis Allen at WVU. And to one of my earliest professors, Tim Newcomb, I am indebted for being so encouraging. For reading, charting, drawing diagrams, coming up with crazy analogies, and whatever else it took to understand the first two chapters of Cinema 1 with me, I cannot forget Phil Mikosz. My students, especially those from the 2006 Spring semester of Critical Reading and Literature and the Contemporary, have kept me going and kept me interested. I wrote the very first words of this dissertation to Nikki Twyning in a letter describing my dissertation, a little trick she thought up to get me writing—without her my courage would have flagged. And finally, I am ever grateful to my family for believing in me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS ................................................................................. 1 1.1 GENRE AND THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS................................................ 1 1.2 “KNOWING WHERE TO LOOK”?............................................................... 19 1.3 INVENTING CRIME ....................................................................................... 42 2.0 THE DETECTIVE NARRATIVE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF HISTORY IN BLEAK HOUSE ..................................................................................................................... 53 2.1 COPYING AND HISTORICAL CRISIS........................................................ 66 2.2 MYSTERY AS ORIGIN ................................................................................... 91 2.3 THE DETECTIVE NARRATIVE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF HISTORY.......................................................................................................................... 104 3.0 SECRETS AND THE ENCLOSURE OF DOMESTIC SPACE IN WILKIE COLLINS’ THE DEAD SECRET ........................................................................................... 114 3.1 ENCLOSURE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY ........................................................................................................................ 138 3.2 NARRATING ENCLOSURE......................................................................... 149 3.3 NARRATING, EXPLOITING THE FEMALE LEGACY ......................... 167 4.0 DETECTING INNOCENCE IN THE MOONSTONE ......................................... 172 4.1 CRIME AS ORIGIN ....................................................................................... 187 4.2 DETECTING INNOCENCE.......................................................................... 199 4.3 “HOW MUCH ALIKE”?................................................................................ 216 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 223 vi 1.0 THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS Origin, though an entirely historical category, has, nevertheless, nothing to do with genesis. The term origin is not intended to describe the process by which the existent came into being, but rather to describe that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance. Origin is an eddy in the stream of becoming, and in its current it swallows the material involved in the process of genesis. That which is original is never revealed in the naked and manifest existence of the factual; its rhythm is apparent only to a dual insight. On the one hand it needs to be recognized as a process of restoration and re-establishment, but, on the other hand, and precisely because of this, as something imperfect and incomplete. There takes place in every original phenomenon a determination of the form in which an idea will constantly confront the historical world, until it is revealed fulfilled, in the totality of its history. -- Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama1 1.1 GENRE AND THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS There is no simple way to begin an investigation into the detective narrative’s place in bourgeois consciousness and the bourgeois cultural imagination. The goal of this study is to discover the 1 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (New York: Verso, 1996), pp. 45-46. 1 ideological nature of the detective narrative, what role it plays in bourgeois or capitalist culture, what ways it mediates real historical processes, and what knowledge of these processes it preserves.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Century British Detective Fiction
    UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 8-1-2014 Detecting Arguments: The Rhetoric of Evidence in Nineteenth-- Century British Detective Fiction Katherine Anders University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Repository Citation Anders, Katherine, "Detecting Arguments: The Rhetoric of Evidence in Nineteenth--Century British Detective Fiction" (2014). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2163. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/6456393 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DETECTING ARGUMENTS: THE RHETORIC OF EVIDENCE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH DETECTIVE FICTION by Katherine Christie Anders Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts St. John’s College, Santa Fe 2003 Master of Library
    [Show full text]
  • Dead Secret UNABRIDGED WILKIE COLLINS Read by Nicholas Boulton
    The COMPLETE CLASSICS Dead Secret UNABRIDGED WILKIE COLLINS Read by Nicholas Boulton A masterful blend of Gothic drama and romance, Wilkie Collins’s mystery novel is an exploration of illegitimacy and inheritance. Set in Cornwall, the plot foreshadows The Woman in White with its themes of doubtful identity and deception, and involves a broad array of characters. The ‘secret’ of the book’s title is the true parentage of the book’s heroine, Rosamond Treverton, which has been written down and kept in an unused room at Porthgenna Tower. This is where, 20 years later, much of the novel’s action is set. Nicholas Boulton graduated from The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, winning the BBC Carleton Hobbs Award for Radio. He has since featured in countless BBC radio dramas, narrated a plethora of award- winning audiobooks, and died a thousand deaths in various video games. Film, TV and theatre appearances include Shakespeare in Love, Total running time: 13:20:40 Game of Thrones and Wolf Hall (RSC). View our full range of titles at n-ab.com 1 The Dead Secret 10:41 27 Chapter 6: Another Surprise 14:24 2 Mrs Treverton’s bed-chamber was a large, lofty room… 11:46 28 Book 4. Chapter 1: A Plot Against the Secret 7:58 3 Sarah started to her feet with a faint scream. 12:57 29 Uncle Joseph shook his head at these last words, and… 12:21 4 Chapter 2: The Child 11:25 30 Uncle Joseph looked all round the room inquiringly… 9:03 5 Chapter 3: The Hiding of the Secret 9:49 31 ‘Ah! we are getting back into the straight road at last.’ 8:24 6 She knelt down, putting the letter on the boards… 11:10 32 Chapter 2: Outside the House 9:32 7 Book 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Wilkie Collins, a Biography
    CHAPT ER TEN cc No Name " The next twelve months or so were among the happiest of Wilkie Collins' life. At the age of 36 he was no longer, as many had regarded him, just one of ' Mr. Dickens' young men,' but a celebrity in his own right. He had learned to enjoy success without losing his balance. His domestic life was happy and seemed relatively stable, if unconventional. He had no monetary cares and for a brief period his health was better than for some time past. He lived, as he liked to do, a full social life, and invitations to public functions, musi- cal evenings and private dinner parties showered upon him. In the winter of I860 we find him staying for the first time with those literary lion-hunters, the Monckton Milnes, at Fryston, in Yorkshire. He also came into touch with George Eliot and G. H. Lewes, and frequently attended their musical ' Saturday afternoons ' at their house near Regent's Park. The musical evening—or afternoon—was an established feature of social life in the London of the Sixties, and Wilkie was known to be a keen music-lover. His understanding of the subject was not particularly profound and we have Dickens' word, for what it is worth, that he was virtually tone-deaf, but at least it is to his credit that his favourite composer was Mozart. If music appears in one of his novels, it is almost sure to be Mozart. Laura Fairlie and Walter Hartwright play Mozart piano-duets; Uncle Joseph's— musical box plays—rather too often, one must confess ' Batti, batti,' the air from Don Giovanni; the blind Lucilla in Poor Miss 135 : 136 WILKIE COLLINS Finch plays a Mozart sonata on the piano.
    [Show full text]
  • The Moonstone
    The Moonstone Wilkie Collins Retold by David Wharry Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn potter Contents Page Introduction 4 Taken From an Old Family Letter 5 Part 1 The Loss of the Diamond 7 Chapter 1 A Record of the Facts 7 Chapter 2 Three Indian Men 8 Chapter 3 The Will 9 Chapter 4 A Shadow 13 Chapter 5 Rivals 14 Chapter 6 The Moonstone 17 Chapter 7 The Indians Return 18 Chapter 8 The Theft 21 Chapter 9 Sergeant Cuff Arrives 26 Chapter 10 The Search Begins 29 Chapter 11 Rosanna 30 Chapter 12 Rachel's Decision 34 Chapter 13 A Letter 36 Chapter 14 The Shivering Sands 39 Chapter 15 To London 44 Part 2 The Discovery of the Truth 46 First Narrative 46 Chapter 1 A Strange Mistake 46 Chapter 2 Rumours and Reputations 49 Chapter 3 Placing the Books 54 Chapter 4 A Silent Listener 56 Chapter 5 Brighton 59 Second Narrative 65 Chapter 1 Money-Lending 65 Chapter 2 Next June 67 2 Third Narrative 69 Chapter 1 Franklin's Return 69 Chapter 2 Instructions 71 Chapter 3 Rosanna's Letter 73 Chapter 4 Return to London 76 Chapter 5 Witness 78 Chapter 6 Investigating 82 Chapter 7 Lost Memory 85 Chapter 8 Opium 87 Fourth Narrative 90 Fifth Narrative 94 Sixth Narrative 100 3 Introduction 'Look, Gabriel!' cried Miss Rachel, flashing the jewel in the sunlight. It was as large as a bird's egg, the colour of the harvest moon, a deep yellow that sucked your eyes into it so you saw nothing else.
    [Show full text]
  • Catalogue of the Original Manuscripts, by Charles Dickens and Wilkie
    UC-NRLF B 3 55D 151 1: '-» n ]y>$i^![^P^P^P^f^^ Bay of aalf. WEDNESDAY, the 18th of JUNE. AT THREE o'CLOCK PRECISELY. )>; ^^jj Note.— The following Facsimiles ivill he found in this Cata- logue :— Lot 2. A page of " The Frozen Deep," in the handwriting of Charles Dickens. Lot 6. The first page of " The Perils of Certain English Prisoners,' in the handwriting of Charles Dickens." Lot 18. The Introduction Page to " The Woman in White," in the handwriting of Wilkie Collins. CATALOGUE OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, BY CHAELES DICKENS AND WILKIE COLLINS, OF The Frozen Deep, and The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, Poems by Dickens ; The Woman in by Dickens and Collins ; Two White, No Name, Armadale, Moonstone, &c., &c,, by Collins. ^Iso a Uia lills nf f ritiati iJIjiatmals in fabirlj tb^g bntlj took part* WHICH WILL BE SOLD BY AUCTION, BY MESSRS. SOTHEBY, WILKINSON & HODGE, ^udioncfira oi f tkrarg |pr0p£rt5 ^ Morks illuatrattiis oi ilj£ fint ^rts, AT THEIR HOUSE, No. 13, WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. On WEDNESDAY, the 18th day of JUNE, 1890, AT THREE o'clock precisely. MAY BE VIEWED TWO DAYS PRIOR. CATALOGUES MAY BE HAD. Dbtden Pbess: J. Davt & Sons, 137, Long Acre, London. CONDITIONS OF SALE. I. The highest bidder to be the buyer ; and if any dispute arise between bidders, the lot so disputed shall be immediately put up again, provided the auctioneer cannot decide the said dispute. II. No person to advance less than I5. ; above five pounds, 25. 6d., and so on in proportion.
    [Show full text]
  • The Death of Christian Culture
    Memoriœ piœ patris carrissimi quoque et matris dulcissimœ hunc libellum filius indignus dedicat in cordibus Jesu et Mariœ. The Death of Christian Culture. Copyright © 2008 IHS Press. First published in 1978 by Arlington House in New Rochelle, New York. Preface, footnotes, typesetting, layout, and cover design copyright 2008 IHS Press. Content of the work is copyright Senior Family Ink. All rights reserved. Portions of chapter 2 originally appeared in University of Wyoming Publications 25(3), 1961; chapter 6 in Gary Tate, ed., Reflections on High School English (Tulsa, Okla.: University of Tulsa Press, 1966); and chapter 7 in the Journal of the Kansas Bar Association 39, Winter 1970. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, or except in cases where rights to content reproduced herein is retained by its original author or other rights holder, and further reproduction is subject to permission otherwise granted thereby according to applicable agreements and laws. ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-1-932528-51-0 ISBN-10 (eBook): 1-932528-51-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Senior, John, 1923– The death of Christian culture / John Senior; foreword by Andrew Senior; introduction by David Allen White. p. cm. Originally published: New Rochelle, N.Y. : Arlington House, c1978. ISBN-13: 978-1-932528-51-0 1. Civilization, Christian. 2. Christianity–20th century. I. Title. BR115.C5S46 2008 261.5–dc22 2007039625 IHS Press is the only publisher dedicated exclusively to the social teachings of the Catholic Church.
    [Show full text]
  • Front Matter
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-54966-0 - The Cambridge Companion to Wilkie Collins Edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO WILKIE COLLINS Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular writers of the nineteenth century. He is best known for The Woman in White, which inaugurated the sensation novel in the 1860s, and The Moonstone, one of the first detective novels; but he wrote more than twenty novels, plays and numerous short stories during a career that spanned four decades. This Companion offers a fascinating overview of Collins’s writing. In a wide range of essays by leading scholars, it traces the development of his career, his position as a writer and his complex relation to contemporary cultural movements and debates. Collins’s exploration of the tensions that lay beneath Victorian society is analysed through a variety of critical approaches. A chronology and guide to further reading are provided, making this book an indispensable guide for all those interested in Wilkie Collins and his work. JENNY BOURNE TAYLOR is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-54966-0 - The Cambridge Companion to Wilkie Collins Edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO WILKIE COLLINS EDITED BY JENNY BOURNE TAYLOR © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-54966-0 - The Cambridge Companion to Wilkie Collins Edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB22RU,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521549660 © Cambridge University Press 2006 This publication is in copyright.
    [Show full text]
  • Disabilities and Gender in the Novels of Wilkie Collins
    Disabilities and Gender in the Novels of Wilkie Collins by ELIZABETH L. AGNEW Submitted to the Office of Honors Programs and Academic Scholarships Texas ARM University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for 1998-99 UNIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWS PROGRAM April 15, 1999 Approved as to style and content by: Pa A. Parrish, Facul Advisor Department of English Susanna Finnell, Executive Director Honors Programs and Academic Scholarships Fellows Group: Humanities Gender and Disabilities in the Novels of Wilkie Collins Elizabeth L. Agnew, (Dr. Paul A. Parrish) University Undergraduate Fellow, 1998-99, Texas A&M University, Department of English Many Victorian novelists sought to promote the importance of the individual by placing their characters in situations that allowed them to go outside society's pre-established boundaries. In spite of these novelists' intentions, a closer study of their works reveals that the writers who tried to move beyond society's expectations were often inherently trapped within them. My thesis argues that Wilkie Collins's representations of characters with disabilities show that even though Collins intended for disabilities to help characters supercede societyk expectations for them, thc Victorian context in which he was writing prevented him from completely achieving his goals. In particular, my thesis examines the ways in which Victorian attitudes toward gender influenced Co11ins's portrayals of characters with disabilities. Disabilities served to empower Collins's female characters who either physically embodied Victorian ideals of beauty and purity or who were financially independent. In contrast, women who did not fulfill these expectations were hurt by disabilities, as were all of Collins's male characters.
    [Show full text]
  • The Moonstone William Wilkie Collins Was Born in London Popular with Such a Huge Audience
    COMPLETE CLASSICS UNABRIDGED Wilkie Collins HE OONSTONE TRead by Ronald M Pickup and cast 1 Cousin – Prologue – The Storming of Seringapatam (1799) 6:14 2 So, as told in our camp, ran the fanciful story... 7:31 3 The Story – First Period – The Loss of the Diamond (1848) 7:03 4 Chapter 2 7:48 5 After that it was all over with me, of course. 6:03 6 Chapter 3 9:56 7 Going round to the terrace, I found... 11:00 8 Chapter 4 12:25 9 I saw no sign of the girl in the plantation. 10:48 10 Before I could say a word, I saw Mr Franklin... 2:18 11 Chapter 5 12:09 12 There was perhaps a grain of truth mixed up... 11:15 13 Chapter 6 12:53 14 I instantly exerted my wits. 10:31 15 I handed the paper back to Mr Franklin... 10:20 16 Chapter 7 11:55 17 Chapter 8 8:02 18 As for Mr Franklin and Miss Rachel... 7:40 19 Add one thing more to this, and I have done. 6:57 20 On the fourteenth, came Mr Godfrey’s answer 10:01 2 21 Chapter 9 9:21 22 With those words she went out... 9:24 23 Chapter 10 8:42 24 You might have heard a pin fall. 8:49 25 I had just ranged the decanters in a row... 9:52 26 Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn’t at all square... 8:35 27 Chapter 11 7:55 28 About half-past seven I woke, and opened my window..
    [Show full text]
  • GENDER and POWER in MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON's LADY AUDLEY's SECRET and WILKIE COLLINS's NO NAME by Rebecca Ann S
    POWER POLITICS: GENDER AND POWER IN MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON'S LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET AND WILKIE COLLINS'S NO NAME by Rebecca Ann Smith A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida August 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to my family, friends, and committee members for their continuous support throughout this project. To my thesis chair, Dr. Oliver Buckton, I offer my sincerest appreciation for his mentorship and support throughout not only the thesis process, but throughout my academic career as both an undergraduate and as a graduate student. Dr. Buckton's literary works, along with the courses I have taken with him over the years, were the inspiration for this thesis, and I am so grateful for having the opportunity to work with him on this project. To Dr. Steven Blakemore, I am thankful for his valuable and honest commentary as it helped me to improve upon this thesis. To Dr. Magdalena Ostas, I am appreciative for her genuine interest in this manuscript and for her encouraging words along the way. I would also like to thank Dr. Johnnie Stover, Dr. Mark Scroggins, Dr. Jeffrey Galin, Dr. John Leeds, and Dr. Barclay Barrios, whose lectures, mentorship, and genuine kindness have been inspiring and encouraging. Last (but certainly not least), I am thankful to my family, my parents, my grandparents, my siblings, and my significant other, for their encouragement and love. iii ABSTRACT Author: Rebecca A.
    [Show full text]
  • Imperial Neuropsychology and an Indian Diamond: the Quantum Ground of Dreaming in the Moonstone Arup K
    Imperial neuropsychology and an Indian diamond I J o D R Imperial neuropsychology and an Indian diamond: The quantum ground of dreaming in The Moonstone Arup K. Chatterjee Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India. Summary. In Wilkie Collins’ novel The Moonstone (1868), Franklin Blake’s censored dream—and his somnambulant theft of the eponymous diamond—was a pioneering thought experiment in Victorian literature, which is also believed to have invented the English detective novel. The question, whether Blake’s supposed dream and somnambulism were constituted by his conscious waking experience or emerged from an unconscious source, remains unanswered as the contents of the dream are not known. Taking The Moonstone beyond the ambit of postcolonial criticism and Anglo-Indian imperial history, I present evidence for the novel’s theme of dreaming being encrypted with principles of Vedanta and ancient Indian dream theories from the Mandukya Upanishad. The novel compels us into a reassessment of the dream continuity hypothesis that its critics have hitherto presumed in one way or another. Taking a few concepts of quantum physics as insightful metaphors—though not as generalizable theories—I argue that, The Moonstone is a remarkable statement on Victorian science, which paves the way for what I define in ‘the quantum ground of dreaming’—a mental state superimposed in experiences of more than one geography and entangled with the desires and anxieties of more than one brain, at once. Keywords: Wilkie Collins; The Moonstone; Sigmund Freud; Carl Jung; psychoanalysis; neuroscience; Vedanta; Man- dukya Upanishad; Turiya; dream quanta 1. Introduction uel Taylor Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan; or a Vision in a Dream’ (1816) made dreaming appear as a surreal Oriental Victorian England’s interest in dreaming can be judged from experience.
    [Show full text]
  • Sarahkmarr Awttc HC.Pdf
    A Warning to the Curious Montague Rhodes James photographs and annotations Sarah K. Marr This is a high contrast version of “The Annotated Warning to the Curious”, for people who may otherwise have difficulty reading it. All the main text and annotations are black against a white background (rather than a mixture of black and grey). This does, however, make it slightly more difficult to separate the story text from accompanying notes. For general use, the original document is recommended: download it from sarahkmarr.com. Curiosity about a Warning Introduction The place on the east coast which the reader is adaptation’s success in capturing the atmosphere asked to consider is Aldeburgh. It is not very of the story. different now from what M.R. James remembered So much for place. As for time, I have used it to have been when he was a child. the dates supplied by James in his original If you have not read M.R. James’s story, “A manuscript. They are by no means definitive, and Warning to the Curious”, then I urge you to skip James himself discarded them before publication. ahead now and read it, slowly, savouring every Whatever the year, however, the mention of the word of his and ignoring all of mine. Then come full Paschal moon places the reburial of the crown back here. I, like William Ager, will wait for you. within the seven days prior to Easter Sunday. I am acutely aware of the failings of this document and in no way make the claim that it is My mother was taking a break from chemotherapy definitive.
    [Show full text]