Gothic remains : corpses, terror and anatomical culture, 1764-1897 / by Laurence Talairach.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence, author.

Series:

Gothic literary studies.

Gothic literary studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gothic fiction (Literary genre), English--History and criticism.

Gothic fiction (Literary genre), English.

Medicine in literature.

Human body in literature.

Human dissection in literature.

Human anatomy in literature.

Dead in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 290 pages).

Place of Publication:

Cardiff : University of Wales Press, 2019

Summary:

"The Gothic has always been fascinated with objects carrying with them a sense of horror – the decomposing body, the rigid corpse, the bleeding statue, the spectral skeleton – capable of creating a sublime form of beauty. Gothic Remains: Corpses, Terror and Anatomical Culture, 1764–1897 offers an exploration of those Gothic tropes and conventions that were most thoroughly steeped in the anatomical culture of the period – from skeletons, used to understand human anatomy, to pathological human remains exhibited in medical museums; from bodysnatching aimed at providing dissection subjects, to live-burials resulting from medical misdiagnoses and pointing to contemporary research into the signs of death. The historicist reading of canonical and less-known Gothic texts proposed throughout Gothic Remains, explored through the prism of anatomy, seeks to offer new insights into the ways in which medical practice and the medical sciences informed the aesthetics of pain and death typically read therein, and the two-way traffic that emerged between medical literature and literary texts."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

1 Rattling bones: the skeleton in the trunk

The chamber of horrors: anatomical models and the gothic

3 Body-snatching

4 The pandemonium of Chimeras: the medical museum

5 Death misdiagnosed: gothic live burials.

ISBN:

9781786834614 (electronic book)

9781786834621

9781786834614

1786834618