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Religion in Frankenstein: Dialectics of Authority

August 30, 2019

academia, criticism, frankenstein, Gothic, religion

Note: the following article on religion in Frankenstein is a modified excerpt (pp. 110-111) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which is available for free from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, presentations, etc. feel free to visit the relevant page on the main Home for Fiction website.

You can also find an article about religion in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and another about religion on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Religion in Frankenstein: A Secular or Religious World?

In the context of Frankenstein, a story replete with moral dilemmas and dichotomies based on otherness, it is perhaps not surprising to discover a multitude of religiously charged temporal dichotomies.

Punter and Byron argue that Victor, although a modern Prometheus (as the subtitle of the novel underlines), lives in “a notably secular world with no gods against whom to rebel, and … his search is conceived of in scientific terms” (2004, 199).

religion in Frankenstein — Religion in *Frankenstein* is a matter of understanding the dialectics of authority involved in the story

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Gothic Immortality in A Christmas Carol

July 2, 2019

Criticism

academia, criticism, Gothic, immortality

Note: the following article on Gothic immortality in A Christmas Carol is a modified excerpt (pp. 63-64) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see the relevant page on the main website.

(Note: Also take a look at the article on immortality in Bram Stoker’s Dracula)

The complexity of Gothic immortality is apparent in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which arguably still remains an under-analyzed, deceptively simple text. Perhaps due to the rather jovial mood of the story – and certainly of the implied outcome – certain important Gothic devices can pass unnoticed. That is especially true for issues pertaining to temporality, reality, and immortality.

Gothic Immortality in A Christmas Carol — Gothic immortality in *A Christmas Carol* is about facing that which is beyond representation; death, the ultimate sublime

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Immortality in Dracula: Dialectics of Ambiguity

May 25, 2019

Criticism

academia, criticism, Dracula, Gothic, immortality

Note: the following article on immortality in Dracula is a modified excerpt (pp. 64-67) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

(Note: Also take a look at the article on immortality in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol)

Immortality in Dracula acquires ominous tints. The curse is not only construed as the inability to find peace, but also as the pressing need to attack others for nutrition. The suggestion of a possible reversal of the ageing process appears for the first time in Dracula’s castle, when Jonathan Harker sees the Count in his box “but looking as if his youth had been half renewed” (D 59).

When Jonathan relives the experience on English soil later on, the Count has “grown young” (D 184) – an oxymoron of sorts, as it includes two meanings with conflicting arrows of time.

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