| Author |
Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence |
| Year |
2009 |
| Publisher |
Cardiff: University of Wales Press |
| Number of pages |
224 |
| ISBN |
9780708322239 |
| Keywords |
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Abstract
Amazon (2013):
This book examines how Wilkie Collins s interest in medical matters developed through
his writing through exploration of his revisions of the late eighteenth-century Gothic
novel from his first sensation novels to his last novels of the 1880s. Throughout
his career, Collins made changes in the prototypical Gothic scenario. The aristocratic
villains, victimized maidens and medieval castles of classic Gothic tales were reworked
and adapted to thrill his Victorian readership. With the advances of neuroscience
and the development of criminology as a significant backdrop to most of his novels,
Collins drew upon contemporary anxieties and increasingly used the medical to propel
his criminal plots. While the prototypical castles were turned into modern medical
institutions, his heroines no longer feared ghosts but the scientist s knife. This
study hence underlines the way in which Collins s Gothic revisions increasingly tackled
medical questions, using the medical terrain to capitalize on the readers fears. It
also demonstrates how Wilkie Collins s fiction reworks Gothic themes and presents
them through the prism of contemporary scientific, medical and psychological discourses,
from debates revolving around mental physiology to those dealing with heredity and
transmission. The book s structure is chronological covering a selection of texts
in each chapter, with a balance between discussion of the more canonical of Collins
s texts such as The Woman in White, The Moonstone and Armadale and some of his more
neglected writings.
