Orientalism and the Gothic

Η παρούσα διατριβή φιλοδοξεί να ερευνήσει τις θεωρητικές πτυχές της σχέσης ιστορίας και λογοτεχνίας μέσα από την λειτουργία και σημασία του Γοτθικού μυθιστορήματος στο μακρύ 19ο αιώνα καθώς και να αναλύσει τις στερεοτυπικές εικόνες της διαφορετικότητας της Νοτιοανατολικής Ευρώπης όπως κατασκευάστηκαν, αναπαράχθηκαν και κυκλοφόρησαν στη βρετανική δημοφιλή κουλτούρα κατά τον μακρύ 19ο αιώνα. Το κύριο μέρος της αποτελείται από την ανάλυση τεσσάρων δημοφιλών γοτθικών μυθιστορημάτων: The Vampyre: A Tale (1819) του John William Polidori, το Carmilla (1872) του Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, το Dracula (1897) και το Lady of the Shroud (1909) του Bram Stoker. Η διατριβή μελετά την απήχηση των μυθιστορημάτων αυτών ως φορέων διαμόρφωσης των αντιλήψεων σχετικά με την Βρετανική ταυτότητα, την αυτοκρατορία και την πολιτισμική της σημασία. Φωτίζει επίσης την ταυτότητα του βάρβαρου «άλλου», τις αντιλήψεις για το φύλο, ακόμα και τη γεωπολιτική της αυτοκρατορίας και τον πολιτιστικό ιμπεριαλισμό μέσω της διάδοσης στερεοτύπων. Τέλος, η παρούσα διατριβή επιχειρεί να τοποθετήσει τη Βρετανική ρητορική για την ετερότητα της Νοτιοανατολικής Ευρώπης σε ένα ευρύτερο πλαίσιο, εξετάζοντάς την και συγκρίνοντάς την με άλλους «κατώτερους» λαούς, βγαίνοντας έτσι από τα στενά πλαίσια του Οριενταλισμού και του Βαλκανισμού.

Guilt, Greed and Remorse: Manifestations of the Anglo-Irish Other in J. S. Le Fanu’s “Madame Crowl’s Ghost” and “Green Tea”

Monsters and the idea of monstrosity are central tenets of Gothic fiction. Such figures as vampires and werewolves have been extensively used to represent the menacing Other in an overtly physical way, identifying the colonial Other as the main threat to civilised British society. However, this physically threatening monster evolved, in later manifestations of the genre, into a more psychological, mind-threatening being and, thus, werewolves were left behind in exchange for psychological fear. In Ireland, however, this change implied a further step. Traditional ethnographic divisions have tended towards the dichotomy Anglo-Irish coloniser versus Catholic colonised, and early examples of Irish Gothic fiction displayed the latter as the monstrous Other. However, the nineteenth century witnessed a move forward in the development of the genre in Ireland. This article shows how the change from physical to psychological threat implies a transformation or, rather, a displacement—the monstrous Other ceases to be Catholic to instead become an Anglo-Irish manifestation. To do so, this study considers the later short fictions of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and analyses how theDublin-born writer conveys his postcolonial concerns over his own class by depicting them simultaneously as the causers of and sufferers from their own colonial misdeeds.

Irish Crime Fiction

This chapter surveys the history of Irish crime fiction, a genre whose contemporary popularity tends to obscure its origins in the works of nineteenth-century writers including Gerald Griffin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Oscar Wilde, and L. T. Meade. The discussion highlights some of the most significant works that lie along the broad spectrum of writing that ‘crime fiction’ occupies and, in so doing, reveals the plurality of ‘Irish’ crime fiction over the course of 180 years. Among the topics covered are the features that distinguish nineteenth-century Irish crime writing from its British counterpart; the emergence of Irish-language crime fiction in the early part of the twentieth century, and the defining features of contemporary Irish crime fiction, which has flourished domestically and internationally since the 1990s.

A New ‘Rhetoric of Darkness’: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, John Connolly and the Irish Gothic

The relationship between Ireland and the Gothic goes back to the early days of the genre, when the Sublime, as identified by the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, became central to the aesthetic concepts which would abound in the articulation of the Gothic as a literary form. The “dark, desolate and stormy grandeur” of the perception of Ireland which was held by the English reading public in the late eighteenth century was readily adaptable for the use of the island as a kind of pre-Enlightenment wilderness which, when combined with its linguistic, religious and cultural “otherness”, provided a fertile territory for the growth of a literature which favoured the supernatural, the uncanny and the numerous features which unite to make up the genre. As early as 1771, Elizabeth Griffin’s "The History of Lady Barton" contains elements of the Gothic, and the huge popularity of Waterford-born Regina Maria Roche’s "The Children of the Abbey"gave a definitive boost to the genre with regard to Irish writers. The success of Sydney Owenson’s "The Wild Irish Girl", and that of Charles Robert Maturin with "The Milesian Chief" and "Melmoth the Wanderer" helped foster a tradition which would be continued throughout the nineteenth century by writers such as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, L.T. Meade and Bram Stoker. It is Le Fanu who, arguably, was the first writer to merge the Gothic with crime fiction. For Begnall, his works “oscillate between the poles of supernatural horror and suspenseful detection”, and, in short fiction such as “The Murdered Cousin” and “The Evil Guest” and novels including "Uncle Silas" and "Wylder’s Hand" Le Fanu consciously merges the emerging format of the murder mystery with the lugubrious labyrinths of the Gothic. Le Fanu’s influence was, of course, international, but the paths he trod were also followed by numerous Irish writers. One of the most successful of these is John Connolly who, since the introduction of Charlie Parker with the publication of "Every Dead Thing" in 1999 has, in the eighteen novels which have appeared to date, successfully revised the concepts and tropes which make up the Irish Gothic. In this paper these works will be analysed with reference to their debt to the Irish Gothic tradition and, most specifically, to the writing of Le Fanu.

Uncanny Styria

The nineteenth century in the West was a period of intellectual and artistic fascination with the East, both distant and near: Asian and Eastern European. One of the regions that attracted the interest of Western Europeans was Styria, situated on the border separating Austria from Hungary and the Balkans, that is, the West from the East. Borderland cultural phenomena stimulate the imagination as much as exotic phenomena. Both disturb with their hybrid character, which results from the mixing of elements from familiar and alien cultures. With their duality and ambiguity, borderlands are the source of the uncanny, which in the Western literature of the nineteenth century became the basic ingredient of the Western image of the Styrian lands. Uncanny Styria was discovered by Basil Hall, a Scottish traveler who reported the impressions of his stay in this region in his 1830s travelogue Schloss Hainfeld; or, a Winter in Lower Styria. In the second half of the century, two Irishmen wrote about the uncanny Styrian borderland: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker. Both associated Styria with vampirism: the former in the 1870s novella Carmilla, the latter in the 1890s short story Dracula’s Guest. The central thread that runs through all three texts is the decline of Styrian nobility. From Hall, it prompts expression of melancholy regret, accompanied by a sense of strangeness. In his work, the erosion of the culture of the nobility results from Styria’s isolated location in the borderlands, as well as the destructive influences of modernity. Le Fanu balances the regret with horror, related to a different interpretation of decline as cultural regression. In Stoker’s story, the terror intensifies with the sense that the regression that affects the province of Styria could extend to Western Europe.

NATUREZA SUBVERSIVA: O PAPEL DO VAMPIRO NO ESTUDO DA SEXUALIDADE EM “CARMILLA” SUBVERSIVE DOI: 10.5216/lep.v17i1.30441

Este artigo objetiva analisar o romance “Carmilla”, de Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (2010) e discutir os principais aspectos que aproximam a literatura gótica fantástica às discussões sobre temas da sexualidade e da psicanálise. Como um monstro cheio de práticas proibidas, o vampiro literário possui um forte apelo sexual e sua presença costuma abalar o status quo. Subversivo em seu padrão de conduta, o morto-vivo consegue, ao mesmo tempo, atrair e provocar repulsa em suas vítimas. São esses aspectos que serão discutidos no presente trabalho.