Monstrous Mobility in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula

This thesis explores Late Victorian Gothic texts that are central to theories on monstrosity in terms of mobility by examining Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula. The goal of this project is to survey the ways in which two exemplary monsters, Mr. Hyde and Count Dracula, promote mobility for others and themselves as an inherent part of their monstrosity. The variety of this mobility is demonstrated by examples showing how monsters move and encourage movement in ways that are social and transformative as well as physical. Because social mobility is essential to these movements, this study also considers the societies these monsters enter and interrupt. The gentleman bachelors of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula\u27s Crew of Light and the women they seek to protect are presented as monolithic groups that the monster joins, transforms, and spurs into movement. By identifying mobility as one of the main attributes of monstrosity, this argument seeks to not only add to the copious amount of scholarship already done on these works but also to reconcile some of them since many of the most critically controversial aspects of these texts are rooted in the monster\u27s mobility. A study focused on movement not only adds something that is missing from the existing discussion on these seminal monsters but also provides a new framework through which to discuss constantly evolving theories of monstrosity

Republican Monsters: The Cultural Construction of American Positivist Criminology, 1767-1920

This dissertation examines the history of and cultural influences on positivist criminology in the United States. From Benjamin Rush to the present day, the U.S. has produced an extensive corpus of empirical and theoretical studies that seeks to discern an objective, scientifically-grounded basis for criminal behavior. American positivist criminology has drawn on numerous subfields and theories, including rational choice / economic theory, biology, and psychology, but in all cases, maintains that a purely scientific explanation of offending is possible. This study proceeds from the perspective that divisions between scientific and non-scientific thought are untenable. Drawing on scholarship in literary criticism and sociology, I argue that positivist criminology confronts an inherent contradiction in purporting to develop a purely scientific account of phenomena that are defined by the moral and cultural sentiments of a society. I thus hypothesize that positivist criminology is in fact reliant on the irrational and fictive cultural tropes and images of crime that it claims to exorcize. The dissertation proceeds by reviewing the literature on the history of criminology, developing a set of functional types or tropes for character analysis, and then examining four separate periods in the development of scientific criminology: eighteenth century studies of rational action, nineteenth century studies of defective reasoning, early twentieth century studies of race and crime, and the development of scientifically informed criminalistics programs. Each of these cases captures a different period and focus in the development of scientific criminology. In threading continuity between these cases, I show how criminological positivism is consistently reliant on culturally informed tropes and characters to render itself sensible and coherent

The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies

'The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies' uses a brief survey of current work on Old English poetry as the point of departure for arguing that although useful, the concepts of orality and literacy have, in medieval studies, been extended further beyond their literal referents of spoken and written communication than is heuristically useful. Recent emphasis on literate methods and contexts for the writing of our surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry, in contradistinction to the previous emphasis on oral ones, provides the basis for this criticism. Despite a significant amount of revisionist work, the concept of orality remains something of a vortex into which a range of only party related issues have been sucked: authorial originality/communal property; impromptu composition/meditated composition; authorial and audience alienation/immediacy. The relevance of orality to these issues is not in dispute; the problem is that they do not vary along specifically oral/literate axes. The article suggests that this is symptomatic of a wider modernist discourse in medieval studies whereby modern, literate society is (implicitly) contrasted with medieval, oral society: the extension of the orality/literacy axis beyond its literal reference has to some extent facilitated the perpetuation of an earlier contrast between primitivity and modernity which deserves still to be questioned and disputed. Pruning back our conceptions of the oral and the literate to their stricter denotations, we might hope to see more clearly what areas of medieval studies would benefit from alternative interpretations

The Parliament of Things and the Anthropocene: How to Listen to ‘Quasi-Objects’

Among the contemporary philosophers using the concept of the Anthropocene, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers are prominent examples. The way they use this concept, however, diverts from the most common understanding of the Anthropocene. In fact, their use of this notion is a continuation of their earlier work around the concept of a ‘parliament of things.’ Although mainly seen as a sociology or philosophy of science, their work can be read as philosophy of technology as well. Similar to Latour’s claim that science is Janus-headed, technology has two faces. Faced with the Anthropocene, we need to shift from technologies of control to technologies of negotiations, i.e., a parliament of things. What, however, does a ‘parliament of things’ mean? This paper wants to clarify what is conceptually at stake by framing Latour’s work within the philosophy of Michel Serres and Isabelle Stengers. Their philosophy implies a ‘postlinguistic turn,’ where one can ‘let things speak in their own name,’ without claiming knowledge of the thing in itself. The distinction between object and subject is abolished to go back to the world of ‘quasi-objects’ (Serres). Based on the philosophy of science of Latour and Stengers the possibility for a politics of quasi-objects or a ‘cosmopolitics’ (Stengers) is opened. It is in this framework that their use of the notion of the Anthropocene must be understood and a different view of technology can be conceptualized

Beholding a ‘Brave New World’: Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of Guiana and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the idea of the world was broadened on an unprecendented scale. The Portuguese and the Spaniards dominated a first stage in the maritime expansion and even divided the planet into two halves. Those times were primarily characterized by a need to overcome the fear of the unknown, to explore and cross the oceans, to reach coast after coast and to register in maps and charts the new found lands. In the wake of the first explorers and benefiting from the extraordinary advancements in the art of navigation, the English, the French and the Dutch, particularly motivated by mercantile interests, started dominating a second stage of sea voyages. Beyond circumstances and motivations, both moments involved unparalleled events in the field of mentality and worldview: fragile ships managed to cross the vast oceans and arrive in unknown lands inhabited by unimaginable human races, plants and animals. From then on, an immense variety of works on voyages, discoveries and adventures was produced. After a brief approach to the general context of the time, I explore the broad dichotomy ‘Civilization versus Nature’ in two Renaissance English texts that, in very different ways, tell of sea voyages and behold a ‘Brave New World’: Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of Guiana (1595) and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1623).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Man and Landscape in Old English Literature

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between man and landscape in Old Eng¬lish literature starting from the assumption that, during the Middle Ages, landscape was not merely a physical space, but it was rather a complex dimension involving religious and moral aspects. Examples from poetic and prose texts will show how the natural world was usually hostile and inhospitable. Mappae mundi will help determine how the Anglo-Saxons considered themselves in relation to the environment

Subversive blood ties: gothic decadence in three characters from murnau's and coppola's renderings of bram stoker's dracula

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, Florianópolis, 2013Esta dissertação consiste em investigar a construção do tema da decadência Gótica em Drácula de Bram Stoker e duas adaptações fílmicas do romance - Nosferatu, de Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, e Drácula de Bram Stoker, de Francis Ford Coppola - tendo como centro da análise como três personagens - Drácula, Jonathan Harker e Mina Harker - se relacionam com tal tema. A decadência Gótica é um padrão literário do contexto fin-de-siècle da sociedade vitoriana inspirada pela crise social que acontecia na Inglaterra no fim do século XIX (Punter e Byron 39-40). Autores como Bram Stoker escreveram histórias que refletiam medos morais e sociais da sociedade vitoriana, retratando imagens de monstros que representavam a transgressão de fronteiras morais e sexuais estabelecidas pelas tradições vitorianas (Botting 88). Tendo tal discussão em mente, este estudo busca conectar a retratação de tal tema do romance às adaptações, também utilizando uma análise fílmica para identificar técnicas que destacam a representação do tema relacionado aos três personagens, finalmente ligando tal tema a crises e confusões sociais que aconteciam nos contextos de ambos os filmes.Abstract : The present dissertation consists of an investigation of the construction of the Gothic theme of decadence in Bram Stoker's Dracula and two film adaptations of the novel - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Nosferatu and Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula - having as the centre of analysis how three characters - Dracula, Jonathan Harker and Mina Harker - relate to that theme. The Gothic decadence is a literary motif from the fin-de-siècle context of the Victorian Era inspired by the social crisis that took place in England in the late nineteenth century (Punter and Byron 39-40). Authors like Bram Stoker wrote stories that reflected moral and social fears of the Victorian society, depicting images of monsters that represented the crossing of moral and sexual boundaries established by the Victorian traditions (Botting 88). Bearing that discussion in mind, this study aims at connecting the portrayal of such a theme from novel to the two adaptations, also making use of a filmic analysis to identify techniques that highlight the depiction of the theme related to the three characters, ultimately linking such a thematic depiction to crises and social commotions that were taking place in both films' social contexts

Identity as Theory and Method for Ethnic Studies

The question of identity is fundamental to human life. Who am I, as a biological and psychological being; as a member of a human group with a particular style and history; as a participant in the common human values, perceptions, and processes which transcend any particular group? Ethnic studies should have as its focus the whole human being, articulated in the biological, socio/cultural, and psycho/personal categories, and the methodology for ethnic studies should reflect the process by which people live and move within the named categories. The interaction of people who are self-consciously engaged in exploring their lives biologically, culturally, and personally, and the articulation of the boundaries at which these interactions take place, determines the scope and content of ethnic studies