Horror in evolution: Determinism, materialism, and Darwinism in the American gothic.
Item
-
Title
-
Horror in evolution: Determinism, materialism, and Darwinism in the American gothic.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9530874
-
identifier
-
9530874
-
Creator
-
Graff, Bennett.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: David S. Reynolds
-
Date
-
1995
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, American | History of Science
-
Abstract
-
Unlike other psychologically-oriented examinations of the American gothic tradition, this study traces the impact of the pre- and post-Darwinian theories of evolution on that tradition. In the first chapter, issues of reception and response are considered in terms of the effect the academic embrace of Jamesian aesthetics and psychological criticism had on the interpretation of the American gothic as a psychological genre in which there could be no place for the materialistic biologism of Edgar Allan Poe and the evolutionary gothicism of Frank Norris, Jack London, and Howard Philips Lovecraft. In the second chapter, Poe is reconsidered in pre-Darwinian rather than pre-Freudian terms, for though he died a decade before the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, his treatment of race and savagery in "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and of hereditary insanity in "Berenice" and "Fall of the House of Usher" prefigure treatments of race scientists after Darwin would routinely make on the one hand, and the formulation of hereditarian theories of disease and degeneration Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau would popularize on the other. In the third chapter, after acknowledging the powerful influence of Poe on Frank Norris, this study details the ways in which the latter's Vandover and the Brute and McTeague incorporate the evolutionary theories of neo-Lamarckism and orthogenesis to create a horrifying vision of a humanity whose behavior remains ever determined by conflicting sexual needs and racial habits. In the fourth chapter, Poe's influence on Jack London and the attempt London made to link the gothic and naturalist traditions are placed within the context of London's preoccupation with racial destinies and the fate of socialism, as treated in his lesser-known science fiction fantasies, "The Red One" and The Scarlet Plague. In the last chapter, the evolutionary horror tradition is brought to a close with Lovecraft, whose worship of Poe and philosophical affinities with London and Norris are brought to bear on the personal and national fears of miscegenation, inbreeding, criminality, and immigration Lovecraft's reactionary fantasies trace in his "Arthur Jermyn," "The Lurking Fear" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth.".
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
