Victorian demons provides the first extensive exploration of largely middle-class masculinities in crisis at the fin de siecle. 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. 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.
By:
Andrew Smith
Other:
Rebecca Mortimer
Imprint: Manchester Univ. Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
Spine: 11mm
Weight: 240g
ISBN: 9780719063572
ISBN 10: 0719063574
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 11 March 2004
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Chapter 1 Degeneration, masculinity, nationhood and the Gothic Chapter 2 Pathologising the Gothic: The Elephant Man, the hysteric, the Indian and the doctor Chapter 3 The Whitechapel murders: Journalism, Gothic London, and the medical gaze Chapter 4 Reading syphilis: The politics of disease Chapter 5 Displacing masculinity: Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula, and London Chapter 6 Performing masculinity: Wilde's art Conclusion Biblography -- .
Andrew Smith is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Glamorgan
