This is a past event
Dr Emily Alder (Edinburgh Napier University) will deliver the 11th Annual Public Lecture for the Centre for the Novel, speaking about 'Gothic Warnings: Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray, Dracula, and the Anthropocene'
Refreshments will be provided.
R. L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) are perhaps the best-known novels of the late Victorian Gothic. Gothic tales are often noted for their ability to tap into cultural anxieties of the time in which they are written, but the idea that these novels have much to say to us about environmental crisis may feel like a bit of a stretch. Nevertheless, their uses of distinctive Gothic features such as the double and the vampire offer unique perspectives on the ecological embeddedness of Victorian culture, which is revealed as a modernity gone wrong. In this talk, I reconsider these famous Gothic works in light of the Anthropocene, a concept used to describe the impact of human activities on Earth systems and in which the Victorian period is deeply implicated.
- Speaker
- Dr Emily Alder
- Venue
- New King's, NK1
- Contact
-
There is no registration for in-person attendance.
Online attendees should email helena.ifill@abdn.ac.uk for a Teams link.