scholarly journals In a Glass Darkly (1872), J. Sheridan LeFanu

2009 ◽  
Vol 195 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Subotsky
Keyword(s):  
Trinity College ◽  
Case Histories ◽  
Medical Case ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu ◽  
Psychological Phenomena

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) is another literary Dubliner. Having studied law at Trinity College, he became a journalist and author, famous for both his sensationalist novels and his supernatural tales. For In a Glass Darkly Le Fanu used a technique common in gothic fiction by having a narrator/editor who presents past documents, in this instance of mysterious medical case histories from the papers of the nowdeceased Dr Hesselius. The latter is a European ‘metaphysical physician’ with Swedenborgian leanings who likes to investigate curious psychological phenomena. He considerably resembles the later Professor Van Helsing from Bram Stoker's Dracula.

scholarly journals Guilt, Greed and Remorse: Manifestations of the Anglo-Irish Other in J. S. Le Fanu’s “Madame Crowl’s Ghost” and “Green Tea”

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-251
Author(s):  
Richard Jorge Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Green Tea ◽  
British Society ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Psychological Threat ◽  
Do So

Monsters and the idea of monstrosity are central tenets of Gothic fiction. Such figures as vampires and werewolves have been extensively used to represent the menacing Other in an overtly physical way, identifying the colonial Other as the main threat to civilised British society. However, this physically threatening monster evolved, in later manifestations of the genre, into a more psychological, mind-threatening being and, thus, werewolves were left behind in exchange for psychological fear. In Ireland, however, this change implied a further step. Traditional ethnographic divisions have tended towards the dichotomy Anglo-Irish coloniser versus Catholic colonised, and early examples of Irish Gothic fiction displayed the latter as the monstrous Other. However, the nineteenth century witnessed a move forward in the development of the genre in Ireland. This article shows how the change from physical to psychological threat implies a transformation or, rather, a displacement—the monstrous Other ceases to be Catholic to instead become an Anglo-Irish manifestation. To do so, this study considers the later short fictions of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and analyses how theDublin-born writer conveys his postcolonial concerns over his own class by depicting them simultaneously as the causers of and sufferers from their own colonial misdeeds.

The Tale of Terror and the ‘Medico-Popular’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Coyer
Keyword(s):  
Case History ◽  
Case Histories ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Medical Case ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Popular Writing ◽  
Medical Material

This chapter argues that the ‘tale of terror’ may be read as a form of hybrid ‘medico-popular’ writing to be classed alongside non-fiction medical texts such as Robert Macnish’s The Anatomy of Drunkenness (1827) and The Philosophy of Sleep (1830), as well as one of the most canonical ‘literary’ medical case histories, Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822). The first section introduces Macnish’s first medico-literary project in relation to De Quincey’s Confessions, before moving on to an examination of the development of the tale of terror in relation to the type of popular medical material previously published in monthly magazines and the case history tradition. The chapter closes by discussing the engagement with the genre by three medical contributors to Blackwood’s, the surgeons, Robert Macnish (1802–37), John Howison (1797–1859) and William Dunlop (1792–1848).

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