The Supernatural Subject of the Sublime in Burke and Radcliffe: A Reading of The Mysteries of Udolpho

The article aims to explore how the supernatural is represented in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), arguing that it reflects Radcliffe’s ideas on the matter, described in her theoretical work On the Supernatural in Poetry (1826). Following Walter Scott’s representation of Radcliffe in his work Lives of the Novelists (1825), her works have been associated with the concept of the explained supernatural. The articles argues that the supernatural present in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) complicates the subjective safety implied by the explained supernatural, a complication visible in the novel’s narrative closure.

Realism and the Supernatural in Ghost Stories of the Fin de Siècle

This article examines the uses of realism in fin-de-siècle ghost stories by Vernon Lee, Ella D’Arcy, Rudyard Kipling, and Gertrude Atherton, It argues that forms of realist practice were central to the sophistication of these stories, and draws connections between their use in supernatural fiction and the work of modernists such as Joseph Conrad. Examining works from the late 1880s to 1905, it maintains that the dismissal of realism by modernists such as Woolf underestimated its importance and its versatility, and that the ghost story’s importance as a vehicle for literary experiment is insufficiently acknowledged.

Beyond the Boundaries of Realism Monstrous Islands and Literary Hybrids at the Fin de Siècle in Conan Doyle’s, R. L. Stevenson’s and H. G. Wells’s Fiction

This article explores the way in which at the fin de siècle, Doyle, Stevenson and Wells chose to set their works on marginal islands in order to spatially escape not only from the bleak reality of the modern world, but also from the constraints of realism, and to reconnect with more imaginative forms of writing. It thus aims to shed new light on the relationship between geographical space and literary aesthetics, and to demonstrate that the island space is especially conducive to generic excursions out of realism and towards the fantastic, the marvellous and even the monstrous, leading to the creation of eminently hybrid literary texts.

“Things that Make One Doubt if They be Mad or Sane” Coping with the Monstrous in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

This article focuses on Bram Stoker’s landmark novel Dracula (1897), in order to better assess how the phenomenology of the monstrous emerges as inextricably interfused with a late-Victorian socio-cultural background. Attention is drawn to a discursive framework pivoting on scientific discoveries and medical research, as well as degeneration theories and the motif of atavistic regression. Taking its cue from recent trends in literary criticism, this paper also examines how the resort to a cutting-edge technological equipment, such as Mina’s portable typewriter and Dr Seward’s phonograph, can be instrumental in abating Dracula’s vampiric threat.

Foley Effects in the Gothic Sound in The Castle of Otranto

The insistence among later eighteenth-century critics of the Gothic novel that sound strongly marks the genre confirms the intuition that sounds in these works are meaningful. The Castle of Otranto is laden with the profusely sonic dimensions that commence with the text's opening pages. The analogue in modern film of Foley effects resonates because these are sounds, applied post-production, that often are louder and more striking than real world sounds; similarly, film and the novel, unlike ordinary experience, can offer true silence. Walpole was experimenting with a new written technology of sound description, related to effects on the stage of his day. Such theatrical sounds form part of the historical background to the analogy with Foley effects in modern film. Walpole is pioneering a new kind of rendering of psycho-acoustic ambience in the novel, and also psycho-acoustically actuated action. He opens up modes of experience not found in fiction prior to this novel – both with the use of written sound effects, and also with the psychic introjection of these effects to produce terror and horror in the minds of fictional characters.

Literary Transmigration George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the Spirit of Transatlantic Exchange

Reading several letters from the eleven-year correspondence alongside Dred and Daniel Deronda, this paper argues that the model of transatlantic spiritual communication presented by Stowe and Eliot’s epistolary friendship takes on a new and potentially radical light when applied to the concept of a transnational and post racial spiritual community. Each text fundamentally challenges the ability of the realist novel to depict a nuanced understanding of racial identity through the use of spiritualist and religious discourse and imagery.

Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fin-de-Siècle Vampire “Olalla” (1885) as ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’

“Olalla” (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson has usually been neglected by critics interested in late-Victorian culture. Preceding of just a few weeks the publication of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), this novella has been judged as a derivative work, a story whose interest lies in its different sources, ranging from Edward Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story to E.A. Poe’s tales. My analysis aims to prove that in writing this work, Stevenson is probably drawing inspiration from the imagery exploited by some members of the Aesthetic Movement, among them Walter Pater and Edward Burne-Jones.

“Our Filthy Liues in Swines are Shewd”: Deformed Pigs, Religious Disquiet and Propaganda in Elizabethan England

This article takes into account some broadsheets published in London between 1562 and 1570, a span of time in which the birth of deformed pigs is read in the light of the conflicts that destabilised the auroral decade of Elizabeth I’s reign. In this period, both Protestants and Catholics fostered a symbolic imagery, as a result of which deformed animals (and humans) were deciphered instrumentally as signs of God’s wrath against the religious and political enemy. The pig – a dirty and obscene beast – embodied further meanings when its anatomy exceeded the laws of nature, and could be interpreted as a mirror of moral and social non-conformity.