This book targets a cluster of darknesses in a century that, in the wake of the Romantic euphoria for the nocturnal, preferred to see itself guided by the glaring light of positivism and clear factitiousness. Yet, both canonical and non-canonical texts of the Victorian age prove that the beacons of affirmation and technological progress were persistently drowned out by stentorian voices of darkish doubt and suicidal abandon. Moored in an ontology that had lost the time-honored balance between light and dark, Victorians were on the point of losing the old idea of the chiaroscuro of life, which had informed early-modern arts. With a focus on body, mind and place, Victorian darknesses addresses the morbid interest in corpses and (female) suicides, the contradiction between spiritualism and the wish for a radically sanitised and enlightened darkness and images of London that show the metropolis sinking into the mire of darkness, pauperism and crime. Legions of self-styled Promethean torchbearers, vampire-slayers and sleuths were dedicated to bringing light, but inevitably thrust the Victorian age into more impenetrable darkness.
.- Introduction.- Part I: Ailing, Abandoned and Dead Bodies.- 1 Andrew
Mangham, Crying for the Light / And with No Language but a Cry: Stroke,
Aphasia and Tennysons In Memoriam.- 2 Sarah Wegener, [ M]ine eyesight goes:
Optical Darkness in the Poetry of Caroline Clive.- 3 Lorraine Rumson, The
Erotics of the Corpse in The Lady of Shalott and Porphyrias Lover.- 4
Jacqueline Kolditz, Can death part us? I would return to you from the
grave: The Return of the Abandoned Woman in Victorian Ghost Stories.- Part
II: Mind-boggling Darknesses.- 5 Pamela Gilbert, Self-Destructive Victorians
and Suicidal Contagion.- 6 Catia Rodrigues, Comfort in Darkness: Anna Mary
Howitts Spiritualist Drawings.- 7 James Dowthwaite, Outer Darkness and the
Fin de Siecle: Arthur Symons's Spiritual Struggles.- 8 Damian Walsh, Many
secrets and many answers: Oscar Wildes Occult Criticism.- 9 Norbert
Lennartz, Utter darkness: the Victorians Pursuit of Absolute Darkness.- 10
Jochen Achilles, In the Twilight of Victorian Idols: Le Fanus Short Fiction
between Enlightenment and Eclipse.- Part III: Places and Topographies of
Darkness.- 11 Gioia Angeletti, Ecogothic and Anthropocenic Darkness in James
Thomson (B.V.)s The City of Dreadful Night.- 12 Frauke Harms, Desert
Regions of the Night: Epistemological Darkness and Mapping the Cityscape in
Charles Dickens Night Walks.- 13 Carolin Sternberg, The dark continent in
our midst: Exploring the East End Other.- 14 Loredana Salis, Writing (out
of) darkness: The Bastilles of England by Louisa Lowe (1883).- 15 Swantje van
Mark, Unveiling the Unknown: The Victorian Detective Figure as Source of
Light in Dark Places.- 16 Francesca Orestano, Dark Places in Bram Stokers
Dracula.
Norbert Lennartz is Full Professor and Chair of English literature at the University of Vechta, Germany.
Jacqueline F. Kolditz is Doctoral Research Assistant at the University of Vechta, Germany.
Carolin Sternberg is Doctoral Research Assistant at the University of Vechta, Germany.
