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Embryology and the Rise of the Gothic Novel

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Diana Pérez Edelman

    1. University of North Georgia, Oakwood, USA

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  • Provides analysis of both literary and medical texts
  • Offers a new understanding of the Gothic and Romanticism and the development of these genres
  • Extends history of medicine research beyond obstetrics, midwifery, and motherhood to incorporate the science of embryology

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Conceiving the Gothic; or, “A New Species of Romance”

    • Diana Pérez Edelman
    Pages 1-43

  3. “A Very Natural Dream”; or, The Castle of Otranto

    • Diana Pérez Edelman
    Pages 45-63

  4. “The Liberty of Choice”; or, the Novels of Ann Radcliffe

    • Diana Pérez Edelman
    Pages 65-86

  5. “Dark, Shapeless Substances”; or, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

    • Diana Pérez Edelman
    Pages 87-118

  6. “Nature Preached a Milder Theology”; Or, Melmoth the Wanderer

    • Diana Pérez Edelman
    Pages 119-154

  7. “Something Scarcely Tangible”; Or, James Hogg’s Confessions

    • Diana Pérez Edelman
    Pages 155-167

  8. Conclusion: Gothic Offspring; or, “The Qualitas Occulta”

    • Diana Pérez Edelman
    Pages 169-174

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 175-179
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Keywords

About this book

This book argues that embryology and the reproductive sciences played a key role in the rise of the Gothic novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Diana Pérez Edelman dissects Horace Walpole’s use of embryological concepts in the development of his Gothic imagination and provides an overview of the conflict between preformation and epigenesis in the scientific community. The book then explores the ways in which Gothic literature can be read as epigenetic in its focus on internally sourced modes of identity, monstrosity, and endless narration. The chapters analyze Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto; Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance, The Italian, and The Mysteries of Udolpho; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer; and James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, arguing that these touchstones of the Gothic register why the Gothic emerged at that time and why it continues today: the mysteries of reproduction remain unsolved.

Reviews

“Foregrounding some of the most canonical and widely studied Gothic and Romantic texts, offering readings that are at once vibrant and new while still somehow familiar in the best possible way, Edelman makes it clear just how fundamental a concern with generation is to any understanding of the period. This work is deeply learned and wonderfully accessible—and profoundly urgent.” (James Robert Allard, Brock University, Canada, and author of Romanticism, Medicine, and the Poet’s Body (2007))

“Edelman argues that contemporary theories of embryology (not yet an empirical science) debate often contradictory concerns about origins, identity, hybridity, and the potential for an infinite number of forms. Gothic narratives express similar anxieties, adapting to popular and high art, changing historical circumstances, and media unimaginable at their birth. Reading the evolution of Gothic in the context of inherently contradictory theories of embryologyilluminates the literature’s own contradictions. (Is it conservative or revolutionary? Feminist or misogynist?) Edelman’s learned and cogent exposition of this unexpected biological context will engage not only students of the Gothic tradition, but also the growing audience discovering the material and scientific roots of Romanticism.” (Anne Williams, Professor of English Emeritus, University of Georgia, USA, and author of Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (1995))



Authors and Affiliations

  • University of North Georgia, Oakwood, USA

    Diana Pérez Edelman

About the author

Diana Pérez Edelman is Associate Professor of English at the University of North Georgia, Gainesville, USA.

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