English literature 02DF711 / 2 ECTS / 12h / Évaluation session 1 assidu·es et dispensé·es d’assiduité : ET écrit 2h / Évaluation session 2 : ET oral
12h – Hélène Machinal
The theory of evolution shattered the representation of human beings in a class-divided British society and triggered representations of alterity (the vampire, the criminal, the mad scientist) which all question human identity. When a new scientific paradigm emerges, an epistemological and ontological crisis follows, and fiction becomes a mirror of anxieties and questionings which redefine a specific cultural context. Darwin’s theory and the emergence of science in place of natural theology marks the second half of the 19th century. Fiction thus testifies to a major shift in scientific imaginary exemplified by Gillian Beer’s « missing link », theories of degeneracy, Lombroso’s criminal atavism. Simultaneously, Stevenson’s and Doyle’s texts also map the human psyche as dual which refracts the emergence of neurology and psychiatry. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll, Stoker’s Dracula and Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes are emblematic figures of fin de siècle fiction which reveal the complex redefinition of identity in progress at the time. This course aims at showing how these famous fictions and the mythical figures they stage are emblematic of tensions which are also embedded in the literary genres displayed in these narratives. We will also ponder the persistence or resurgence of these figures throughout popular culture in connection with another technoscientific revolution, that of biotechnologies and the digital.
Corpus
- R.L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Other Tales, [1897] Oxford, OUP, 2008.
- B. Stoker, Dracula, [1897] Oxford, OUP, 2011.
- C. Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, « The Creeping Man » available at OUP, but also at Project Gutenberg
- Sherlock, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, BBC, 4 seasons.
Secondary sources
- Beer, Gillian. Open Fields, Oxford, OUP, 1996.
- Beer, Gillian. Darwin’s Plots, Cambridge, CUP, 1983, 2000.
- Ginzburg, Carlo. Signes, traces, pistes, Racines d’un paradigme de l’indice, Le Débat, 1980/6 (n°6), en ligne.
- § Naugrette, Jean-Pierre (Ed.). Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Paris, Autrement, 1997.
- Marigny, Jean (ed.). Dracula, Paris, Autrement, coll. « Figures Mythiques », 1997.
- Ménégaldo, Gilles et D. Sipière (eds.), Dracula, Stoker-Coppola, Paris, Ellipses, 2005.