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.
Author(s): Diana Pérez Edelman
Series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 191
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Praise for Embryology and the Rise of the Gothic Novel
Contents
Chapter 1: Conceiving the Gothic; or, “A New Species of Romance”
“Seeds of Poetry and Rhyme”
“Modes of Perception”; Or, Eighteenth-Century Embryology
The Gothic: Preformationist or Epigenetic?
Internal Sources of Identity
Monstrosity, Hybridity, Endless Narration
References
Chapter 2: “A Very Natural Dream”; or, The Castle of Otranto
Origin Stories: The Dream and the Prefaces
The Houses of Manfred and Alfonso
The Statue as Symbol of Epigenesis
References
Chapter 3: “The Liberty of Choice”; or, the Novels of Ann Radcliffe
Radcliffe and Science
Individual Passion versus Parental Control
Family Resemblance
The “Explained Supernatural”
The Miniature
Endless Narration
References
Chapter 4: “Dark, Shapeless Substances”; or, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
M. W. Shelley & Embryology
Interrogating Embryology
Agrippa and Paracelsus
Epigenesis & Preformation
Egalitarian Embryology: The Female Creature
References
Chapter 5: “Nature Preached a Milder Theology”; Or, Melmoth the Wanderer
Biddy Brannigan: Birthing the Story
Alonzo: From Preformation to Epigenesis
Adonijah: Symbol of Epigenetic Power
Immalee/Isidora: From Epigenesis to Preformation
The Novel’s Monstrous Form
References
Chapter 6: “Something Scarcely Tangible”; Or, James Hogg’s Confessions
“Stern Doctrines” Versus “Free Principles”
The Editor’s Scientific Narrative
Robert Colwan’s Preformationist Nightmare
The Monstrous Form of Confessions
References
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Gothic Offspring; or, “The Qualitas Occulta”
Diversity of Identities: The Fiction of Reproductive Technologies
Hauntings in the Body: Supernatural Fiction
References
Index
