This book explores how nineteenth-century science stimulated the emergence of weird tales at the fin de siècle, and examines weird fiction by British writers who preceded and influenced H. P. Lovecraft, the most famous author of weird fiction. From laboratory experiments, thermodynamics, and Darwinian evolutionary theory to psychology, Theosophy, and the ‘new’ physics of atoms and forces, science illuminated supernatural realms with rational theories and practices. Changing scientific philosophies and questioning of traditional positivism produced new ways of knowing the world—fertile borderlands for fictional as well as real-world scientists to explore. Reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) as an inaugural weird tale, the author goes on to analyse stories by Arthur Machen, Edith Nesbit, H. G. Wells, William Hope Hodgson, E. and H. Heron, and Algernon Blackwood to show how this radical fantasy mode can be scientific, and how sciences themselves were often already weird.
Author(s): Emily Alder
Series: Palgrave Studies In Literature, Science And Medicine
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 254
Tags: Nineteenth-Century Literature
Acknowledgements......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
1 Weird Tales and Scientific Borderlands at the Fin de Siècle......Page 11
Knowing the Weird......Page 16
Scientific Borderlands......Page 26
Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siècle......Page 36
Part I Borderlands of Mind, Body, and Spirit......Page 53
2 Weird Selves, Weird Worlds: Psychology, Ontology, and States of Mind in Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Machen......Page 54
“Ripples Over the Threshold”: The Weird Case of Jekyll and Hyde......Page 55
Enchanted Student: Arthur Machen’s Borderlands......Page 63
Symbols of Something and Nothing: The Great God Pan......Page 70
Conclusion......Page 79
3 Weird Knowledge: Experiments, Senses, and Epistemology in Stevenson, Machen, and Edith Nesbit......Page 87
Body and Spirit as Ways of Knowing......Page 88
Dr. Jekyll’s Self-Experiment......Page 95
“Brain of a Devil”: Arthur Machen’s “The Inmost Light”......Page 100
“The Three Drugs”......Page 106
“The Five Senses”......Page 110
Conclusion......Page 116
4 Weirdfinders: Reality, Mastery, and the Occult in E. and H. Heron, Algernon Blackwood, and William Hope Hodgson......Page 122
The Weirdfinding Profession......Page 123
Flaxman Low’s Real Ghosts......Page 132
John Silence’s Powerful Sympathy......Page 139
Thomas Carnacki’s Occult Inventions......Page 148
Conclusion......Page 156
Part II Borderlands of Time, Place, and Matter......Page 164
5 Meat and Mould: The Weird Creatures of William Hope Hodgson and H. G. Wells......Page 165
Biological Borderlands and Where to Find Them......Page 166
Pumas and Rabbits: The Horrors and Hopes of The Island of Doctor Moreau......Page 171
The “Boundary Kingdom”: William Hope Hodgson’s Cryptogamy......Page 181
Doubtful Beings: “The Voice in the Night” and “The Derelict”......Page 185
Conclusion......Page 193
6 Weird Energies: Physics, Futures, and the Secrets of the Universe in Hodgson and Blackwood......Page 201
New Worlds a-quiver: Energetic Realms......Page 202
Energetic Abfutures: The House on the Borderland and The Night Land......Page 208
The House on the Borderland......Page 209
The Night Land......Page 215
“Heat from a Magical Source”: Blackwood, Energy, and Quantum Weird......Page 220
“The Willows”......Page 221
Blackwood’s Quantum Weird......Page 229
Conclusion......Page 233
Afterword......Page 242
Index......Page 245
