Jekyll and Hyde: Key ideas

epistolary

a novel written as a series of documents; usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used

testimony

established in the 1860s with the emergence of Gothic fiction; stories created through diary entries, letters, confessions, manuscripts, official documents etc.

allegory

a story which can be seen to have a hidden meaning (which is often about society)

allusion

a hint at a bigger or hidden meaning

fable

a type of allegory which illustrates a moral point or principle of human behaviour

motif

an idea or object that recurs throughout a literary work

doppelgänger

a double, a mirror image or other side of a character; might reveal the negative or evil side or what is repressed within a person

pathetic fallacy

the environment is closely linked human emotions: storms are angry, fog hides secrets, etc...

binary opposites

states that all elements of human culture can only be understood in relation to one another and how they function within a larger system or the overall environment

heterodiegetic

narration coming from 'outside the fictional world; most often 3rd person narrator

homodiegetic

narration coming from 'within' the fictional world; most often 1st person narrator

delaying the narrative

slowing down of the story; withholding and delaying what is going to happen next; builds suspense and allows the reader to settle and think about what we are taking in

ruined or grotesque buildings

Gothic convention: any building which is ruined by time, damage, lack of care; ugly buildings full of dark corners, gargoyles or mysterious rooms /spaces

religious ideas

Gothic convention: might include heaven/hell, good/evil, etc.

sensibility / excess emotion

Gothic convention: characters wallowing in their own feelings; exaggerated or heightened emotional states or characters

excess and extremity

Gothic convention: extreme greed or wealth, over the top behaviour or showing off

supernatural

Gothic convention: vampires, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, hauntings, werewolves, etc...

imagery of decay

Gothic convention: things rotting and breaking down - people, places or objects

horror and terror

Gothic convention: scary bits for characters and readers

isolation and loneliness

Gothic convention: characters living alone, stranded or separated from their normal lives

blurring of sanity/insanity

Gothic convention: characters unsure if what they are seeing is real or imagined; characters who might be going mad; does the readership even know?

sex and sexuality

Gothic convention: Lust, desire, sex, etc!

liminality

a threshold, a boundary; an in-between state or place. A place of change, transition or transgression

liminal spaces

a physical place on the verge of something; waiting areas between one point in time and space and the next, etc.

abhuman

bodies that occupy the threshold between two terms of an opposition; seen as a threat to the integrity of human identity

cultural stress

The Gothic [can be partially] understood as a cyclical genre that reemerges in times of ____________ in order to negotiate anxieties for its readership."

narrative frames

a story within a story, within sometimes yet another story; common to Gothic writing

degeneration theory

a widely influential concept in the borderlands of social and biological science in the 19th century, concerned as to how humanity, or certain classes, become lower or atavistic in form

physiognomy

believed that the shape of a person's skull was a reflection of their personality - including whether or not they had been born with criminal tendencies

Lombroso

"Scientist" who argued that by examining a person's features and their "anomalies", you could diagnose a person's degenerate nature

phrenology

a person's facial features or expression, especially when regarded as indicative of character or ethnic origin

fin de siècle

means "end of the century"; used to refer to refers to the hectic spirit of a turbulent period

Industralisation

process that happens in countries when they start to use machines to do work that was once done by people; transformation from agricultural to one based on factories

Urbanization of London

demographic upheavals, social change, the decline of public health and the increase of working class, threatening middle-class culture, is a result of what?

Victorian gentleman

seen as dependable, emotionally restrained, rational and cultured; reputation is of great importance

social control theory

people voluntarily keep themselves from committing crimes or acting amorally because they have internalized this moral code from their community; the story of Jekyll and Hyde acts as a moral lesson to those who go against society