Browsing by Subject "Gothic"
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Item Interview with the southern vampire : reviving a haunted history in contemporary film and television(2015-05) Austin, Katharine Griffin; Frick, Caroline; Fuller-Seeley, KathrynIt is difficult to imagine a time without vampires, a fixture of Western popular culture since the nineteenth century. The vampires of today, however, are a far cry from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Stoker’s creation is a monster, a metaphor for all things feared by Victorian culture. Contemporary vampires, on the other hand, are increasingly depicted as marginalized figures striving for redemption and human connection. Within this shift from monster to social outcast, a peculiar trend has emerged: vampire fiction set in the American South that deliberately addresses the region's haunted history. As mythical beings, vampires often serve as mediators for an era's particular anxieties or fears. So why does current Western society need not just sympathetic vampires but sympathetic Southern ones? What particular concerns do these Southern vampires negotiate? And how does a Southern locale engender this purpose? To answer these questions, I first consider how such media engage with the Southern Gothic. Chapter one focuses on HBO's True Blood (2008-2014), examining how Southern vampire texts negotiate race and class structures and promote the possibility of a modern, integrated Southern society. Chapter two compares Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (Neil Jordan, 1994) and The Originals (The CW, 2013-Present) to explore how Southern vampires mediate feelings of collective guilt and motivate (or avoid) reparation efforts. To understand not only the elements but also the cultural import of this regionalized media trend, I next extend these readings with an examination of audience reception. Chapter three focuses on viewers of The Originals, surveying the diversity of audience engagement with the series as well as identifying recurring trends within that diversity. In combining all three threads of analysis, I conclude that vampire texts set in the American South perform a complex and at times paradoxical function, promoting feelings of nostalgia for an imagined South as well as engendering processes of critical self-reflection.Item Multum in parvo : the miniature hours of Edith G. Rosenwald as woman’s devotional book and amulet(2013-05) Pietrowski, Emily Diane; Holladay, Joan A.The Hours of Edith G. Rosenwald (c.1340–80) is a small book of hours in the Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress. Despite unique iconography and luxurious illuminations, this manuscript has so far received little scholarly attention. This thesis analyzes the size and iconography of the Rosenwald Hours to suggest that it was designed for a specific owner and function. No surviving documentation gives evidence of ownership, yet the standard program of miniatures was changed to suit a specific audience. The manuscript’s iconographic program and stylistic treatment are here considered in the context of contemporary books made for women, particularly women of the royal court in Paris, to suggest a likely audience. One of only a few extant miniature books of hours, the Rosenwald Hours is a valuable tool for looking at the place of small manuscripts in medieval society. This thesis examines the physical size, the iconography, and the inclusion of saint portraits as indicators of a function beyond the standard devotional use. A case is made for the manuscript’s connection to pilgrimage and to protective amulets. Combined with the assessment of its iconography, this study suggests an owner and intended use for miniature books of hours that provides a new way to look at these manuscripts, from obscure Flemish examples to the famous Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux.Item Proximity to the divine : personal devotion at the Holy Graves in Strasbourg(2012-05) Bryant, Aleyna Michelle; Holladay, Joan A.; Smith, Jeffrey C.In this thesis I examine the Holy Grave monument located in the St. Catherine chapel of Strasbourg cathedral, erected by Bishop Berthold von Bucheck sometime between 1346 and 1348. This sculptural sarcophagus currently exists in fragmented form in the Musée de l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame; only the four relief panels of the sleeping guardians, the gisant of Christ, and some fragments of the baldachin remain of the original monument. Scholars have been able to ascertain the placement and probable appearance of the Holy Grave based on traces of three lancet bays, wall paint, and bolt holes discovered along the west wall of the chapel during twentieth-century excavations. The numerous copies that the St. Catherine Holy Grave inspired throughout Strasbourg and the surrounding area attests to the significance of the monument within the larger Holy Grave tradition. The Strasbourg Holy Grave functioned liturgically as a prop used by the clergy to reenact the drama of the resurrection during Holy Week. I argue, however, that the monument's permanence, relative accessibility, and pathos-inspiring imagery suggest its use on a more frequent basis. Through its isolation of scenes from the biblical narrative and its visualization of complex mystical metaphors, the Holy Grave at Strasbourg cathedral--and thus also the numerous copies it inspired--reveals its use as an object for personal devotion, much like the group of Rhenish Andachtsbilder that also flourished at this time. The changing beliefs concerning Christ's Passion, the nature of the Eucharist, and the understanding of death and the afterlife are reflected in the style, iconography, and didactic message of the Holy Grave monument. The influence that the mendicant orders and Rhenish mystics had on the spiritual instruction of the laity in Strasbourg points to the understanding of this monument as a tool to aid the faithful in achieving union with God. The popularity of Holy Graves in and around Strasbourg ultimately illustrates the medieval desire for proximity to the divine. As the emphasis on Christ's suffering and death grew throughout the devotional practices of the fourteenth century, art forms like the Holy Grave monument at Strasbourg cathedral increasingly focused on engendering pathos in the medieval devout. The Strasbourg Holy Grave's liturgical, devotional, and anagogical functions coalesce to create a monument that's fundamental purpose consisted of aiding the faithful in their journey toward salvation.Item Tearing up the nun : Charlotte Brontë's gothic self-fashioning(2013-05) Sloan, Casey Lauren; MacKay, Carol HanberyThis report explores the ideological motivations behind Charlotte Brontë's inclusion of and alterations to gothic conventions in Villette (1853). By building on an account of the recent critical conversation concerning the conservative Enlightenment force of the gothic, this report seeks to explain the political significance of a specific, nineteenth-century mutation in the genre: Lucy Snowe as an experiment in the bourgeois paradigm. Lucy Snowe's sophisticated consciousness of genre manifests in her minute attention to dress, but the persistence of her personal gothic history means that Villette enacts political tension between individualistic "self-fashioning" and historical determinism as clashing models for the origin of identity.