The Gothic Body
Subtitle: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: January 13, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9780521552592
Subjects: Collections & anthologies of various literary forms; Literary studies: 19th century; Literature and society; History; Sociology; 19th Century English Novel And Short Story; Horror Fiction; Social Science; Literature - Classics / Criticism; English; Literary Criticism; History and criticism; Gender Studies; Sociology - General; English fiction--19th century--History and cr; English fiction--19th century--History and criticism; Social Science / Gender Studies; Social Science / Sociology / General; Social Science-Gender Studies; English fiction; 19th century; Gothic revival (Literature); Great Britain
First sentence: In William Hope Hodgson's "The Crew of the Lancing," an unnamed ship, sailing somewhere in the tropics, is becalmed after a submarine earthquake.
Description: This book accounts for the resurgence of Gothic, and its immense popularity, during the British fin de siecle. Kelly Hurley explores a key scenario that haunts the genre: the loss of a unified and stable human identity, and the emergence of a chaotic and transformative "abhuman" identity in its place. She shows that such representations of gothic bodices are strongly indebted to those found in nineteenth-century biology and social medicine, evolutionism, criminal anthropology, and degeneration theory.

Gothic is revealed as a highly productive and speculative genre, standing in opportunistic relation to nineteenth-century scientific and social theories.