Gothic Infections: Arthur Schnitzler and the Haunted Culture of Modernism
This article examines the intersection between Gothic elements and the theme of infection in two texts by Arthur Schnitzler, arguing that the re-emergence of the Gothic in modernist literature draws on the popularized scientific discourses of bacteriology around 1900 and their imagination of germs a...
| Veröffentlicht in: | The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies. - Modern Humanities Research Association, 2009. - 113(2018), 1, Seite 147-167 |
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| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2018
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies |
| Schlagworte: | Health sciences Behavioral sciences Arts Social sciences Biological sciences |
| Zusammenfassung: | This article examines the intersection between Gothic elements and the theme of infection in two texts by Arthur Schnitzler, arguing that the re-emergence of the Gothic in modernist literature draws on the popularized scientific discourses of bacteriology around 1900 and their imagination of germs as invisible invaders and enemies. The theme of infection functions as a Gothic trope, used to negotiate the experience of increasingly blurred boundaries between self and ‘other’. Schnitzler's texts reveal how the fear of infection becomes linked to the protagonists' loss of their secured sense of self within the normative boundaries of a bourgeois masculinity. |
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| ISSN: | 22224297 |