Industrial Light and Magic: Popular Science, Technology, and the Occult in the Late Victorian Period (2003)
Pamboukian, Sylvia Amy (Author)
Indiana University
Brantlinger, Patrick
Edition Details: Advisor: Brantlinger, Patrick
Physical Details: 164 pp.
Language: English
Victorian and early twentieth-century British culture was characterized by interest in both new technology and the occult. This dissertation examines the ways in which new technologies and versions of occultism influenced and were influenced by emerging forms of narrative in fin-de-sicle British culture, including the romance and the short story. Such narratives not only introduce technologies, such as X- rays and automobiles, into literature but link modern technology with classic elements of the Gothic genre, such as exotic settings, suspenseful plots, and supernatural phenomena. This alignment of modern technology with Gothic horror undermines Enlightenment distinctions between science and the occult and reveals a surprising kinship that is often overlooked. A contribution to both literary and science studies, this project examines the works of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and others in their cultural and scientific contexts in order to pursue more fully the various implications of these developments upon emerging concepts of modernity.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 64 (2003): 2097. UMI order no. 3094144.
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