Overview
- 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
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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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.
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Keywords
Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“Embryology and the Rise of The Gothic Novel is an interesting and well-researched monograph, offering original insights into the development of the Gothic alongside eighteenth-century embryological discourses. It provides a critical and informative literary-scientific perspective into well-known as well as understudied texts of Gothic literature. I recommend it as a reference for eighteenth-century Gothic fiction, specifically for researchers interested in epigenetic literature and embryological discourses.” (Arwa F. Al-Mubaddel, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, June 6, 2024)
“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
About the author
Diana Pérez Edelman is Associate Professor of English at the University of North Georgia, Gainesville, USA.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Embryology and the Rise of the Gothic Novel
Authors: Diana Pérez Edelman
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73648-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-73647-7Published: 03 July 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-73650-7Published: 03 July 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-73648-4Published: 02 July 2021
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 179
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Fiction, Literary Theory, Gothic Studies, History of Science, Cultural Studies