Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century EnglandIn pursuing the sources for late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century demonization of racial and cultural difference, this book moves back and forth between the imagined world of literature and the real world of historical experience, between fictional romance and what has been called the parallel fictions of the human sciences of anthropology and biology. The author argues that the gothic genre and its various permutations offered a language that could be appropriated, consciously or not, by racists in a powerful and obsessively reiterated evocation of terror, disgust, and alienation. But he shows that the gothic itself also evolved in the context of the brutal progress of European nationalism and imperialism, and absorbed much from them. This book explores both the gothicization of race and the racialization of the gothic as inseparable processes. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION I | 1 |
Was Frankensteins Monster a Man and a Brother? | 9 |
Cannibalism and Popular Culture | 41 |
Vampire Gothic and LateVictorian Identity | 124 |
Identity and the Gothic Revival 126 Stoker | 148 |
The HalfBreed as Gothic Unnatural | 167 |
Three Studies | 198 |
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appetite association blood body Bram Bram Stoker British cannibal Caribbean century character cited colonial corpse course creature criminal danger dark demonic depravity discourse dissection domestic Dracula Earl's Court empire England English Eurasian European exploration fact fear female feminine fiction Fiji Fijian fin de siècle Frankenstein Frankenstein's Monster French gender gothic gothic fiction gothic literature half-breed half-caste Henry Irving homosexual horror human Ibid imperial Indian Irish Irving island Jamaica Jewish Kitty Jewell language late-Victorian literary literature London Lucy Westenra male Maori Mary Shelley masculine metaphoric Métis middle-class miscegenation missionary mixed-race Monster moral mulatto murder Narrative native Negro nineteenth nineteenth-century novel observed perhaps popular culture prejudice primitive race racial reading representation resonance sailor Savage Africa seen sensational sexual Shelley's slave social South Pacific Stoker story suggested tale theme threat tion tradition unnatural vampire victim Victorian Wandering Jew wild William woman women Zealand