The Unspeakable Victorian: Thomas Carlyle, Ideology and Adaptation
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The Unspeakable Victorian: Thomas Carlyle, Ideology and Adaptation Mark Wallace Thesis submitted for the award of PhD School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University Supervisor: Dr Brigitte Le Juez November 2015 1 Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of PhD is entirely my own work, that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright, and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: (Candidate) ID No.: Date: 2 Acknowledgements Research for this thesis was carried out with the support of an Irish Research Council Postgraduate scholarship between October 2012 and September 2015. I would like to also acknowledge the support of the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University, and especially my supervisor, Dr Brigitte Le Juez, for her constant support and availability throughout the process. Finally, I would like to thank my viva examiners, Dr Ralph Jessop and Dr Pat Brereton, for their input into the final product. 3 Table of Contents Declaration ...................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 3 List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. 7 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 8 Introduction and Biographical Note on Thomas Carlyle ................................................................ 9 Biographical Note on Thomas Carlyle ..................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 1: Methodology ............................................................................................................... 27 Adaptation .............................................................................................................................................. 27 Narrative Structuralism ....................................................................................................................... 30 Author, Genre, and Paratext ............................................................................................................... 33 The Cultural Code ................................................................................................................................ 37 Reading Carlyle and Reading Source Texts: Encounters with Otherness ........................................... 39 Ideology ................................................................................................................................................... 41 Feyerabendian Epistemology and Comparative Literature ................................................................ 44 De-centred Ideology ........................................................................................................................... 47 Ideology and Narrative ....................................................................................................................... 49 Ideology and Adaptation ..................................................................................................................... 51 Same Plot, Different Ideology ............................................................................................................. 52 Chapter 2: Reception History of Thomas Carlyle......................................................................... 55 1830s-1881: ‘The sound of ten thousand trumpets’ .............................................................................. 56 Sincerity and Madness ........................................................................................................................ 57 Counter to Utilitarianism and Political Economy ................................................................................ 62 Provisionality, Prophecy and Palingenesia ......................................................................................... 64 The Condition-of-England Novel ......................................................................................................... 69 The Death of Prophecy ....................................................................................................................... 70 1881-1945: ‘The Most Insincere of All’ ................................................................................................... 72 The Froudian Turn ............................................................................................................................... 72 Coming of Age with Carlyle ................................................................................................................. 74 The International Influence................................................................................................................. 80 Growing Insincere ............................................................................................................................... 81 4 The Political Influence ......................................................................................................................... 82 1946-Present: ‘The Grand Silence’ .......................................................................................................... 87 Chapter 3: Towards a Wise Despotism: Gaskell’s North and South (1854-55) and the BBC adaptation North & South (2004) .................................................................................................. 93 Mary Barton: Carlylean Peritext ............................................................................................................. 93 Unfinished Reading: Gaskell and Carlyle ................................................................................................ 97 North and South and the Condition of England ...................................................................................... 98 The Carlylean Position on Industrial Relations ..................................................................................... 100 Wise Despotism in Gaskell’s North and South ...................................................................................... 104 Carlylean Echoes ............................................................................................................................... 105 Thornton and the Mob...................................................................................................................... 109 Margaret’s Powers of Subjection ...................................................................................................... 111 Thornton’s Power for Conquest ........................................................................................................ 113 North & South (BBC, 2004) ................................................................................................................... 120 An Intertextual Presence in North & South ...................................................................................... 121 North & South: Thornton and Heroism, Carlylean and Otherwise ................................................... 123 The Kiss and Society Transcended .................................................................................................... 132 Chapter 4: Heroism and Social Palingenesis in Thomas Carlyle and The Dark Knight Rises ... 136 Relations of Influence and Adaptation – Carlyle, Dickens, Nolan ......................................................... 138 Carlyle’s Philosophy of History ............................................................................................................. 142 The Dark Knight Rises: Adapting Many Sources. Parable of Democracy in The Dark Knight. .............. 149 Textual Analysis of The Dark Knight Rises ............................................................................................. 152 Comparative Structures of Feeling ....................................................................................................... 165 Chapter 5: Representations of Celibate Heroism: Carlyle and Sherlock .................................... 170 Temptation, The Making of a Man and Heroic Celibacy in Carlyle ....................................................... 171 Everlasting No and Yea ..................................................................................................................... 175 Celibacy Heroized in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Stories ......................................................................... 179 Rationalism without Melancholy .......................................................................................................... 183 21st-century Holmes: Elements of Adaptation ..................................................................................... 191 The Sexual Assumption ..................................................................................................................... 196 Holmes’ Courtship: ‘Charles Augustus Milverton’ ...............................................................................