Science And Social Science In Bram Stoker S Fiction

Author : Carol A. Senf
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2002-10-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780313013362

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Science and Social Science in Bram Stoker's Fiction by Carol A. Senf Pdf

Best known today as the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker also wrote several other works, including The Jewel of Seven Stars, Lady Athlyne, and The Lair of the White Worm. In his exploration of supernatural subjects, such as vampirism, he is clearly a Gothic writer. The fantastic elements of his novels seem very much at odds with the world of science. Stoker, nonetheless, draws upon a large body of scientific theory and technological innovation throughout his writings. This book studies his blending of Gothic subjects with emerging discoveries in science and technology. The volume begins with an overview of Stoker's familiarity with scientific and technical developments. It then examines the role of science and technology in his various works, which demonstrate his familiarity with civil engineering, anthropology, physics, chemistry, and archaeology. While many of his writings seem to offer a rather uncritical celebration of science and its applications, some works, such as The Jewel of Seven Stars, reveal what happens when science oversteps its bounds. Stoker emerges as an early writer of science fiction whose work thoughtfully considers the place of science in society.

Author : Mark Siegel
Publisher : Millefleurs
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : UOM:39015012425933

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Hugo Gernsback, Father of Modern Science Fiction by Mark Siegel Pdf

Author : Dongshin Yi
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2017-03-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781351962506

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A Genealogy of Cyborgothic by Dongshin Yi Pdf

In his provocative and timely study of posthumanism, Dongshin Yi adopts an imaginary/imaginative approach to exploring the transformative power of the cyborg, a strategy that introduces balance to the current discourses dominated by the practicalities of technoscience and the dictates of anthropocentrism. Proposing the term "cyborgothic" to characterize a new genre that may emerge from gothic literature and science fiction, Yi introduces mothering as an aesthetic and ethical practice that can enable a posthumanist relationship between human and non-human beings. Yi examines the cyborg's literary manifestations in novels, including The Mysteries of Udolpho, Frankenstein, Dracula, Arrowsmith, and He, She and It, alongside philosophical and critical texts such as Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism and System of Logic, William James's essays on pragmatism, ethical treaties on otherness and things, feminist writings on motherhood, and recent studies of posthumanism. Arguing humans imagine the cyborg in ways that are seriously limited by fear of the unknown and current understandings of science and technology, Yi identifies in gothic literature a practice of the beautiful that extends the operation of sensibility, heightened by gothic manifestations or situations, to surrounding objects and people so that new feelings flow in and attenuate fear. In science fiction, which demonstrates how society has accommodated science, Yi locates ethical corrections to the anthropocentric trajectory that such accommodation has taken. Thus, A Genealogy of Cyborgothic imagines a new literary genre that helps envision a cyborg-friendly, non-anthropocentric posthuman society. Encoded with gothic literature's aesthetic embrace of fear and science fiction's ethical criticism of anthropocentrism, the cyborgothic retains the prospective nature of these genres and develops mothering as an aesthetico-ethical practice that both humans and cyborgs should perform.

Author : Marilyn Brock
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2014-01-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780786454402

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From Wollstonecraft to Stoker by Marilyn Brock Pdf

This collection of 13 essays examines the work of Victorian authors Wilkie Collins, M.E. Braddon, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mary Wollstonecraft, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James and Charlotte Bronte. Each essay explores their use of archetypal Gothic elements, such as dark secrets and forbidden sensations, to depict nineteenth-century attitudes to class, gender, race, colonialism and imperialism.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 389 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2015-09-23
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780786499366

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The Vampire in Folklore, History, Literature, Film and Television by Anonim Pdf

This comprehensive bibliography covers writings about vampires and related creatures from the 19th century to the present. More than 6,000 entries document the vampire's penetration of Western culture, from scholarly discourse, to popular culture, politics and cook books. Sections by topic list works covering various aspects, including general sources, folklore and history, vampires in literature, music and art, metaphorical vampires and the contemporary vampire community. Vampires from film and television--from Bela Lugosi's Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood and the Twilight Saga--are well represented.

Author : Nicholas Russell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780521113830

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Communicating Science by Nicholas Russell Pdf

Ideal for students and practitioners in science, engineering and medicine, this book gives an insight into science's place in society.

Author : Dina Khapaeva
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2019-11-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781787695276

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Man-Eating Monsters by Dina Khapaeva Pdf

What role do man-eating monsters - vampires, zombies, werewolves and cannibals - play in contemporary culture? This book explores the question of whether recent representations of humans as food in popular culture characterizes a unique moment in Western cultural history and suggests a new set of attitudes toward people, monsters, and death.

Author : Anne Stiles
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2011-12-22
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781139504904

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Popular Fiction and Brain Science in the Late Nineteenth Century by Anne Stiles Pdf

In the 1860s and 1870s, leading neurologists used animal experimentation to establish that discrete sections of the brain regulate specific mental and physical functions. These discoveries had immediate medical benefits: David Ferrier's detailed cortical maps, for example, saved lives by helping surgeons locate brain tumors and haemorrhages without first opening up the skull. These experiments both incited controversy and stimulated creative thought, because they challenged the possibility of an extra-corporeal soul. This book examines the cultural impact of neurological experiments on late-Victorian Gothic romances by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, H. G. Wells and others. Novels like Dracula and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde expressed the deep-seated fears and visionary possibilities suggested by cerebral localization research, and offered a corrective to the linearity and objectivity of late Victorian neurology.

Author : Eleanor Dobson
Publisher : UCL Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2022-10-06
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781787358485

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Victorian Alchemy by Eleanor Dobson Pdf

Victorian Alchemy explores nineteenth-century conceptions of ancient Egypt as this extant civilisation was being ‘rediscovered’ in the modern world. With its material remnants somewhat paradoxically symbolic of both antiquity and modernity (in the very currentness of Egyptological excavations), ancient Egypt was at once evocative of ancient magical power and of cutting-edge science, a tension that might be productively conceived of as ‘alchemical’. Allusions to ancient Egypt simultaneously lent an air of legitimacy to depictions of the supernatural while projecting a sense of enchantment onto representations of cutting-edge science. Examining literature and other cultural forms including art, photography and early film, Eleanor Dobson traces the myriad ways in which magic and science were perceived as entwined, and ancient Egypt evoked in parallel with various fields of study, from imaging technologies and astronomy, to investigations into the electromagnetic spectrum and the human mind itself. In so doing, counter to linear narratives of nineteenth-century progress, and demonstrating how ancient Egypt was more than a mere setting for Orientalist fantasies or nightmares, the book establishes how conceptions of modernity were inextricably bound up in the contemporary reception of the ancient world, and suggests how such ideas that took root and flourished in the Victorian era persist to this day.

Author : Sherri L. Brown,Carol Senf,Ellen J. Stockstill
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2018-03-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781442277489

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A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English by Sherri L. Brown,Carol Senf,Ellen J. Stockstill Pdf

The Gothic began as a designation for barbarian tribes, was associated with the cathedrals of the High Middle Ages, was used to describe a marginalized literature in the late eighteenth century, and continues today in a variety of forms (literature, film, graphic novel, video games, and other narrative and artistic forms). Unlike other recent books in the field that focus on certain aspects of the Gothic, this work directs researchers to seminal and significant resources on all of its aspects. Annotations will help researchers determine what materials best suit their needs. A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English covers Gothic cultural artifacts such as literature, film, graphic novels, and videogames. This authoritative guide equips researchers with valuable recent information about noteworthy resources that they can use to study the Gothic effectively and thoroughly.

Author : Miranda Corcoran,Steve Gronert Ellerhoff
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2020-06-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780429560354

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Exploring the Horror of Supernatural Fiction by Miranda Corcoran,Steve Gronert Ellerhoff Pdf

Detailing the adventures of a supernatural clan of vampires, witches, and assorted monstrosities, Ray Bradbury’s Elliott family stories are a unique component of his extensive literary output. Written between 1946 and 1994, Bradbury eventually quilted the stories together into a novel, From the Dust Returned (2001), making it a creative project that spanned his adult life. Not only do the stories focus on a single familial unit, engaging with overlapping twentieth-century themes of family, identity and belonging, they were also unique in their time, interrogating post-war American ideologies of domestic unity while reinventing and softening gothic horror for the Baby Boomer generation. Centred around diverse interpretations of the Elliott Family stories, this collection of critical essays recovers the Elliotts for academic purposes by exploring how they form a collective gothic mythos while ranging across distinct themes. Essays included discuss the diverse ways in which the Elliott stories pose questions about difference and Otherness in America; engage with issues of gender, sexuality, and adolescence; and interrogate complex discourses surrounding history, identity, community, and the fantasy of family.

Author : Diane Long Hoeveler,Deborah Denenholz Morse
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2016-09-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317010098

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Time, Space, and Place in Charlotte Brontë by Diane Long Hoeveler,Deborah Denenholz Morse Pdf

Organized thematically around the themes of time, space, and place, this collection examines Charlotte Brontë in relationship to her own historical context and to her later critical reception, takes up the literal and metaphorical spaces of her literary output, and sheds light on place as both a psychic and geographical phenomenon in her novels and their adaptations. Foregrounding both a historical and a broad cultural approach, the contributors also follow the evolution of Brontë's literary reputation in essays that place her work in conversation with authors such as Samuel Richardson, Walter Scott, and George Sand and offer insights into the cultural and critical contexts that influenced her status as a canonical writer. Taken together, the essays in this volume reflect the resurgence of popular and scholarly interest in Charlotte Brontë and the robust expansion of Brontë studies that is currently under way.

Author : Thomas Schöll
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 33 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2011-03-20
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9783640860333

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Social and Religious Aspects in Bram Stoker's Dracula by Thomas Schöll Pdf

Essay from the year 1995 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, University of Hannover (Englisches Seminar), course: Introduction to Literature, language: English, abstract: 1. Background to the time the story was written To reveal the social background of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", as well as the aspects of religion and science that influenced on society, we have to consider the events of that time. "Dracula" was written in the year of 1897. It was the so-called Victorian Age that was expressed by a high morality which was especially celebrated by the upper class who more than ever felt superior towards the poor working classes. It was a time when great social and economical problems struck society, especially its poor levels. But it also was a time of great scientific progress that lead to an upper society becoming richer and the working class remaining poor. The final result was a strong belief in materialism on the side of those who considered scientific progress as important and positive and a growing interest in Roman Catholicism, parapsychology and spirituality on the side of those who were more sceptic towards science and materialism. Society was more and more divided into rich and poor and the problems on the side of the poor increased. That was one reason why the church lost its power and influence on the majority of the society. Another reason for this was Gladstone's "Disestablishment Act". But it was also a time when England invaded other countries to increase their number of colonies that could be exploited. [...]

Author : Jennifer Simkins
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781476627250

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The Science Fiction Mythmakers by Jennifer Simkins Pdf

A literary genre that pervades 21st-century popular culture, science fiction creates mythologies that make statements about humanity’s place in the universe and embody an intersection of science, religion and philosophy. This book considers the significance of this confluence through an examination of myths in the writings of H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick and Frank Herbert. Presenting fresh insights into their works, the author brings to light the tendency of science fiction narratives to reaffirm spiritual myths.

Author : Sharon M. Gallagher
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2017-04-06
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781476665801

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The Irish Vampire by Sharon M. Gallagher Pdf

The origins of the vampire can be traced through oral traditions, ancient texts and archaeological discoveries, its nature varying from one culture to the next up until the 20th century. Three 19th century Irish writers--Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker--used the obscure vampire of folklore in their fiction and developed a universally recognizable figure, culminating in Stoker's Dracula and the vampire of today's popular culture. Maturin, Le Fanu and Stoker did not set out to transform the vampire of regional folk tales into a global phenomenon. Their personal lives, national concerns and extensive reading were reflected in their writing, striking a chord with readers and recasting the vampire as distinctly Irish. This study traces the genealogy of the modern literary vampire from European mythology through the Irish literature of the 1800s.