M.G. Lewis (1775-1818)

Portrait of the West Indian novelist Matthew Lewis

Spectres of Antiquity

Gothic literature imagines the return of ghosts from the past. What about the classical past? Spectres of Antiquity is the first full-length study describing the relationship between Greek and Roman culture and the Gothic novels, poetry, and drama of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. Rather than simply representing the opposite of classical aesthetics and ideas, the Gothic emerged from an awareness of the lingering power of antiquity, and it irreverently fractures and deconstructs classical images and ideas. The Gothic also reflects a new vision of the ancient world: no longer inspiring modernity through its examples, antiquity has become a ghost, haunting and oppressing contemporary minds rather than guiding them. Through readings of canonical works by authors including Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Mary Shelley, Spectres of Antiquity argues that these authors’ ghostly plots and ideas preserve the remembered traces of Greece and Rome. In comprehensive detail, Spectres of Antiquity rewrites the history of the Gothic, demonstrating that the genre was haunted by a far deeper sense of history than readers had previously assumed.

Queer Urges and the Act of Translation

The fourth chapter of the book turns to Matthew Lewis, author of the scandalous 1796 novel The Monk. More than many of his contemporaries, Lewis was able to blend intricate and learned allusions to Greek and Roman literature into the popular frame of his Gothic texts. This chapter argues that he uses these allusions to give voice to particular anxieties: about the consequences of Gothic publishing and, particularly, about his own queer desires. The chapter begins by examining the translations in The Monk of poems of Horace and Anacreon, both explicitly homoerotic texts from antiquity. Second, it turns to The Love of Gain (1799), a free translation of a satire of Juvenal, which Lewis used as a covert means of defending his career as an author of Gothic texts. Finally, I turn to a translation of Goethe in Lewis’s ballad collection, Tales of Wonder (1800), and a classicizing parody of that translation in the accompanying volume, Tales of Terror (1801), both of which comment implicitly on Lewis’s own specific authorial and erotic anxieties. Rather than truly blending Gothic and classical, Lewis uses the erudite allusions to antiquity to open up a new channel of communication within popular works, giving voice to desires and fears that would otherwise have remained unsaid.

O GÓTICO, O SUBLIME E A DISTOPIA: UMA LEITURA DE 1984

Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo refletir sobre uma possível aproximação entre o gótico e a distopia a partir de um estudo do romance 1984, de George Orwell. Apesar das diversas dificuldades existentes em qualquer tentativa de definição de ambos como gêneros discursivos, pretendo delimitar algumas características formais recorrentes tanto em narrativas góticas como naquelas tomadas como distópicas. Com isso em vista, buscarei explorar mais profundamente um elemento específico, a saber, o sublime. No Gótico setecentista, esse conceito estético foi amplamente mobilizado por autores como Matthew Lewis e, principalmente, Ann Radcliffe, tanto como um elemento formal para a construção do enredo – especialmente em descrições do espaço narrativo – quanto como um efeito de recepção que se buscava suscitar no leitor. Portanto, pretendo verificar se o sublime é um elemento constitutivo de 1984 para, a partir dele, analisar se é possível descrever o romance de Orwell como uma obra de influxos góticos.

Bio-optimisation of a tidal channel

<p>Scotland has ambitious decarbonisation and climate change objectives, such as generating 100% of gross annual electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2020. Tidal stream energy is a renewable and predictable source of energy that converts the kinetic energy within tidal currents, into electricity, using a hydrokinetic device such as a horizontal axis turbine. However, economically viable tidal stream development is currently confined to areas of exceptionally high current speeds, and this can severely limit the choice of area. If the speed threshold required for an economically viable tidal site can be lowered then the number of potential sites could increase dramatically.</p><p>It is well known that macro-algae (e.g. kelp) grow in perspective tidal energy sites, as they requiring similar water depths and current speeds. Furthermore, kelp is known to grow in dense patches, reaching from the sea-floor to the ocean surface, and can modify tidal current speeds. Indeed, observations have shown that “kelp forests” can locally reduce current speeds by a third (Jackson and Winant, 1983). This local reduction in current speed will cause an increase in speed elsewhere, in order to conserve mass. Therefore, we hypothesise that by adding a kelp forest in the vicinity of a tidal channel, the current speed and tidal stream resource could be increased sufficiently for the site to become economical.</p><p>A three dimensional finite volume hydrodynamic model has been used to model an idealised tidal channel. The drag imposed by kelp was theoretically calculated and represented in the model as a sub grid scale momentum sink. The changes to the current speed resulting from this bio-optimisation of the tidal channel were investigated and show that the current speed in the centre of the channel can be increased. Kelp were then added to a previously developed hydrodynamic model of the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters to investigate how such bio-optimisation could influence an area currently being considered for substantial tidal stream development. The changes on both the areas of suitable tidal stream development and the power yield are investigated.</p><p><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></p><p>Matthew Lewis wishes to thank Aaron Owen and Ade Fewings at SuperComputingWales, and Fearghal O'Donncha at IBM-research Ireland for fruitful discussions, and the METRIC grant, EP/R034664/1.</p><p><strong>References</strong></p><p>Jackson, G. A. and Winant, C. D. (1983). Effect of a kelp forest on coastal currents. Continental Shelf Research, 2(1), pp.75-80.</p>

The Secret of Divine Providence

The emphasis on political continuity in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution leads to a specifically Whig providentialism, examined in Chapter 3 through the work of Clara Reeve, Horace Walpole, and Matthew Lewis. In Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron, the country Whig version, stressing links with the medieval past, unites with Newtonian theology in which God’s finger is at work in every ‘natural occurrence’ to render the supernatural revelatory of this providential care. Divine justice and historical inexorability, romance, and realism are conjoined. By contrast, the sceptical Horace Walpole, representative of the Walpolian Whig narrative of political rupture, questions Providence in The Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother, and substitutes himself as quasi-divine author, whose originality lies in the grotesque mixture of realist and supernatural elements. Matthew Lewis essays an eschewal of Providential mechanisms in The Monk but here grotesque features such as the bleeding nun disclose an aporia which reveals the limit of libertine desire and a negative supernatural.

The Curious Case of Mary Hylas

The circulation of medical knowledge about fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth, both in the Atlantic world and on plantations in the Americas, is reflected in plantation management manuals written by British doctors who lived and worked in the Caribbean. Although midwives presided over most births on plantations during the age of abolition, doctors became increasingly concerned with solving the problem of infertility. Plantation doctors elaborated theories, grounded in European medical traditions, about the delivery of Afro-Caribbean children and the causes of Afro-Caribbean infertility. Sexual promiscuity and consequent venereal disease figured large among these supposed causes. The story of Matthew Lewis, who grew up in England and traveled to Jamaica for the first time as an adult in order to reform management practices on two plantations inherited from his father, provides a case study in the deployment of new plantation management practices designed to promote reproduction and recommended by British doctors.