Item Details

title

Objects, People, and Landscapes of Terror: Considering the Sublime through the Gothic Mode in Late 19th Century Novels

author

Porter, Kelly Ann

abstract

In this master’s thesis, I explore how theories of the sublime are negotiated in three Victorian novels and how they relate to issues of foreignness and gender in the nineteenth century. The introduction provides an overview of each chapter and outlines key theorists and theories of the sublime pertinent to my argument. My first chapter includes an analysis of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868) to show how Collins presents horror and terror as terms that bleed into and out of one another but are viewed in Victorian society as experiences meant for specific times and places. Chapter two involves a close reading of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876) to examine how the Jewish male is an agent for prompting females to experience terror as sublimity. In the last chapter, I investigate Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) to show how Dracula tries to assert a perverse sublimity through vampirism which must be corrected by the end of the novel for the British to restore their authority over land and body. My conclusion links the three texts together by presenting common themes and structures found in each work.

subject

Daniel Deronda

Dracula

horror

sublime

terror

The Moonstone

contributor

Jenkins, Melissa (committee chair)

Wilson, Eric (committee member)

Hena, Omaar (committee member)

date

2015-06-23T08:35:43Z (accessioned)

2015 (issued)

degree

English (discipline)

embargo

forever (terms)

10000-01-01 (liftdate)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/57121 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis