Topographic Horror

Definition (Working)

How I am defining this genre in this project (not general textbook definition):

-Within fin-de-siecle discourse (Gothic Body 47)
#trans-corporeality of the text itself!! (ibid 49)

Core Features

Affects / Atmosphere

What this genre feels like (tone, mood, structure):

Key Texts in My Project

• Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
• Beetle
• Dorian Gray
• Dracula
• Great God Pan
• Heart & Science
• Jane Eyre
• Mill on the Floss
• She
• Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• Tess of d'Urbervilles
• Villette
• Woman in White

Formal Patterns

(Repetition, structure, narration style, time, space, etc.)

• "confusing mass of interlocking stories, all of which interrupt each other and will not conclude, narrators suffer from aphasia and breakdown, the text and its interpolated texts are ruptured by narrative gaps, elision, and outright refusals" (gothic body 48)

Themes This Genre Produces

• #psychoanalysis
• #embodiment

Theory Connections

Which concepts explain how this genre works?

• Theory Notes/Gothic Body
• Bodily Natures
• Faces of Degeneration (see Gothic Bodies P.58)

Comparison Points

How this genre differs from others I’m studying:

• Compared to Theory Notes/Gothic Body symptomatic readings
• Compared to [[]]

Genre Function in My Dissertation

What is this genre doing in my argument?

Critical Questions

What this genre makes me ask:

• Creed, Alaimo, Kristeva, Derrida

Evidence / Passages

Quotes or scenes that define the genre:

• "A novel like Great God Pan" deploys literary techniques...until the very end shrouding its dreaded evil (the abhuman Helen Vaughan) from view of the reader by means of obfuscating rhetoric, the multiplication and confusion of narrative layers, and constant interruption of the story being told..." (Gothic Body 47)
• trauma is one that exceeds language

Open Problems / Tensions

Where this genre breaks down or becomes complicated: