Gothic Remains

Laurence Talairach

Description

- Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

- Wilkie Collins, Medicine and the Gothic (Cardiff: The University of Wales Press, 2009).

- Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Novels (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

Edited collections:

- L. Talairach, G. Séginger, C. Maillard, L. Dahan-Gaïda (eds). 2017. Penser le vivant. Paris : Editions Maison des Sciences de L’Homme.

- L. Talairach-Vielmas & E. Jouve, A. Guillain (eds). 2016. L’Acte inqualifiable ou le meurtre au féminin/Unspeakable Acts: Murder by Women. New York, Bruxelles : Peter Lang.

- L. Talairach-Vielmas & M. Bouchet (eds). 2014. Insects in Literature and the Arts. New York, Bruxelles : Peter Lang.

L. Talairach-Vielmas (ed.). 2014. Anatomical Models. Histoire, Médecine et Santé/History, Medicine and Health 5 (Spring).

- L. Talairach-Vielmas & M. Bouchet (eds). 2013. Lost and Found: In Search of Extinct Species. Actes du Colloque International EXPLORA 2011. Toulouse : Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Toulouse.

L. Talairach-Vielmas (ed.). 2012. Mécaniques du vivant : Savoir médical et représentations du corps humain XVII–XIXe siècle. Epistémocritique (Oct.). http://www.epistemocritique.org/spip.php?rubrique63

- L. Talairach-Vielmas & M. Bouchet (eds). 2012. Spinning Webs of Wonder: Insects and Texts. Actes du Colloque International EXPLORA 2010. Toulouse : Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Toulouse.

- L. Talairach-Vielmas (ed.). 2011. Science in the Nursery: The Popularisation of Science in Children’s Literature in Britain and France, 1761–1901. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

- L. Talairach-Vielmas & C. Lanone (eds). 2010. Variations sur Darwin/Variations on Darwin. Miranda 1 (mars). http://miranda.revues.org/321

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.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Rattling Bones: The Skeleton in the Trunk
The Chamber of Horrors: Anatomical Models and the Gothic
Body-snatching
The Pandemonium of Chimeras: The Medical Museum
Death Misdiagnosed: Gothic Live Burials
Epilogue
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Romance
• Gothic

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786834614
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

GOTHIC REMAINS
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 1 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AMSERIES PREFACE
Gothic Literary Studies is dedicated to publishing groundbreaking
scholarship on Gothic in literature and flm. The Gothic, which has
been subjected to a variety of critical and theoretical approaches,
is a form which plays an important role in our understanding of
literary, intellectual and cultural histories. The series seeks to promote
challenging and innovative approaches to Gothic which question
any aspect of the Gothic tradition or perceived critical orthodoxy.
Volumes in the series explore how issues such as gender, religion,
nation and sexuality have shaped our view of the Gothic tradition.
Both academically rigorous and informed by the latest developments
in critical theory, the series provides an important focus for scholarly
developments in Gothic studies, literary studies, cultural studies and
critical theory. The series will be of interest to students of all levels
and to scholars and teachers of the Gothic and literary and cultural
histories.
SERIES EDITORS
Andrew Smith, University of Sheffeld
Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi
EDITORIAL BOARD
Kent Ljungquist, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts
Richard Fusco, St Joseph’s University, Philadelphia
David Punter, University of Bristol
Chris Baldick, University of London
Angela Wright, University of Sheffeld
Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona
For all titles in the Gothic Literary Studies series
visit www.uwp.co.uk
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 2 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AMGothic Remains
Corpses, Terror and Anatomical Culture,
1764–1897
by
Laurence Talairach
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS
2019
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 3 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AM© Laurence Talairach, 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material
form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic
means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of
this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner.
Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce
any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales
Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-460-7
e-ISBN 978-1-78683-461-4
The right of Laurence Talairach to be identifed as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset in Wales by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Pentyrch, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 4 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AMIn memory of my grandmother, Andrée Wiedemann
(1916–2009), with love.
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 5 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AMThis page is intentionally left blank Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction1
1 Rattling Bones: The Skeleton in the Trunk 15
2 The Chamber of Horrors: Anatomical Models and
the Gothic 49
3 Body-snatching 91
4 The Pandemonium of Chimeras: The Medical
Museum 133
5 Death Misdiagnosed: Gothic Live Burials 171
Epilogue 209
Notes 215
Select Bibliography 263
Index283
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 7 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AMThis page is intentionally left blank ACknowledgements
It was on a Sunday morning that my grandmother died the frst
time. She was declared dead by the doctor who was on duty that
day. Nevertheless, as her family gathered to prepare her funeral,
she suddenly resurrected, wondering what people were doing in
her bedroom, fumbling about for her personal papers. She died a
second, and fnal, time a few days later.
Her medical misdiagnosis, and the idea that she might have been
buried alive, were sources of inspiration during the years it took
me to write this book. Gothic Remains: Corpses, Terror and Anatomical
Culture, 1764–1897 was thus spurred, in part, by a terrifying fear
of, and a macabre fascination with, live burial, ignited by my
grandmother’s medical history which was hardly exorcised by the
many tales of terror I have feasted on since that 18 October 2009.
Gothic Remains also results from my unfagging interest in everything
‘medical’, both as a former medical student and as a literary scholar
examining the relationships between literature and medicine in the
nineteenth century, as developed in Wilkie Collins, Medicine and the
Gothic (University of Wales Press, 2009). In addition to encountering
inspiring dead-yet-alive relatives, I have been very fortunate in the
last eight years to meet and work with many scholars and artists
from around the world who shared a taste for anatomical culture,
and I would like to acknowledge my debt to them, as this book
would have been very different had my path never crossed theirs.
The idea behind Gothic Remains started with a series of conferences
I organised and co-organised in London, Paris and Toulouse between
2011 and 2013, as part of the larger EXPLORA collaborative
research project. This initiative involved the Toulouse Museum of
Natural History and was supported by several research centres from
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 9 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AMAcknowledgements
the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, notably the CAS research
centre (EA 801) and FRAMESPA (UMR 5136). One of the frst
events around anatomical culture was held in December 2011 at
the Toulouse Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the
History of Medicine, where I presented a paper on Dr Ledoux’s
‘[s]hapeless dead creatures . . . foat[ing] in yellow liquid’ in Wilkie
Collins’s Armadale. This furthered my previous work on Collins by
focusing exclusively on references to anatomy and dissection. This
two-day conference was followed by a second, in June 2012, held
at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès (‘L’Anatomiste et son
e ecadavre: Corps, médecine et éthique, XVI –XXI siècle’), where I
gave a paper on body-snatchers in the nineteenth century (‘Le
Marché aux cadavres: Résurrectionnistes et littérature britannique
eau XIX siècle’).
These conferences and refections on human remains paved the
way for an ambitious three-part project co-organised with Rafael
Mandressi, and held at the Toulouse Museum of Natural History
(‘Medical Museums and Anatomical Collections’, February 2013),
the Academy of Medicine in Paris (‘Anatomical Models’, April
2013) and the Hunterian Museum (Royal College of Surgeons) in
London (‘Exhibiting Human Remains’, June 2013). My sincerest
thanks go to Samuel Alberti, Francis Duranthon and Jérôme van
Wijland – then directors respectively of the Hunterian Museum
(RSC), the Toulouse Museum of Natural History and the library
of the Academy of Medicine – for welcoming and supporting the
conferences and providing a stimulating venue where scholars and
artists could exchange ideas. Moreover, the one-day conference at
the Hunterian Museum would not have been possible without the
generous support of the British Society for Literature and Science.
I would like to thank the Society for advancing literature and science
studies and continually encouraging new scholars in the feld. I am
also indebted to my co-organiser, Rafael Mandressi, who, as a
historian of medicine, introduced me to new methodologies and
with whom I later co-wrote an article on the history of anatomical
models. Trips to the Dupuytren Museum with Rafael, or to the
dermatological wax moulages of the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris,
with Jérôme, were integral to the preparation of these events,
nurturing my interest in the (bleak) future of anatomical collections.
x
00 Prelims GothicRemains 2019_9_9.indd 10 09-Sep-19 9:18:48 AMAcknowledgements
Furthermore, the international scholars and artists who were involved
in the ‘Human Remains’ series, and who travelled from across
Europe and America to Toulouse, Paris and London, made working
on death and corpses a much more cheerful activity than I would
have believed. This was highlighted by Joanna Ebenstein’s enthusiasm
for ‘Morbid Anatomy’ and Kelley Swain’s reading on wax models
at King’s College London, as well as visits to the Gordon Museum
of Pathology at that institution. I am very grateful to them for
creating such a vibrant community of scholars and making research
on cadavers and death so much fun.
Among the many artists I encountered, I was also lucky to meet
Valentina Lari, then working at the Old Operating Theatre in
London. We embarked on a short flm and exhibition focusing
on the anatomical collections of the Toulouse medical school
where I had worked as a medical student twenty-fve years before.
Through out the making of the flm (Liminality, 2014), my contact
with anatomical collections and my attempts to trace the identity
and history of some of the objects on display, slowly falling into
oblivion, increased my desire to spread the word about the future
of anatomical collections. Valentina Lari’s artistic rendering of the
beauty of models and remains left to decompose continually haunted
me as I explored their voyage into Gothic texts and
nineteenthcentury culture more generally.
Furthermore, a large part of the research I performed on live
burials in Gothic texts would have been impossible without a
collaborative research project involving Martin Willis, then Chair
of Science, Literature and Communication in the Department of
English at the University of Westminster, between 2013 and 2014.
‘Cultural Catalepsy’ examined representations of catalepsy in the
nineteenth century on both sides of the Channel. It was generously
funded by the University of Westminster, and sections of Chapter
5 refect many of the conclusions that Martin and I then drew on
seizures, as