The Dream of a Transparent Body: Identity, Science and the Gothic Novel
Wagner, C
Date: 1 May 2012
Journal
Gothic Studies
Publisher
Manchester University Press
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Abstract
Late eighteenth-century science aimed to render the body transparent; in contrast, gothic novels of the same period often represented the body as an untrustworthy source of information about the self. In these novels, characters may often be reduced to a bodily or facial map, which may give clues as to personal character, motivation ...
Late eighteenth-century science aimed to render the body transparent; in contrast, gothic novels of the same period often represented the body as an untrustworthy source of information about the self. In these novels, characters may often be reduced to a bodily or facial map, which may give clues as to personal character, motivation and intention. Yet the practice of reading the body — as practiced in sciences such as physiognomy, phrenology or criminology — also comes under intense interrogation. Through disastrous mis-readings, misdiagnoses and mis-identifications, gothic novelists demonstrate how conflating body and self is deeply threatening to ideas of ‘unique’ personhood.
English
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