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ROMANCING THE BOMB: GOTHIC TERROR AND TERRORISM IN LATE
NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE
by
Jennifer Lynn Malia
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)
December 2009
Copyright 2009 Jennifer Lynn Malia
Object Description
| Title | Romancing the bomb: Gothic terror and terrorism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature |
| Author | Malia, Jennifer Lynn |
| Author email | jmalia@gmail.com; jmalia@aus.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | English |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2009-07-31 |
| Date submitted | 2009 |
| Restricted until | Restricted until 30 Sep. 2011. |
| Date published | 2011-09-30 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Kincaid, James R. |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Alkon, Paul K. Seifrid, Thomas |
| Abstract | This project examines the cultural relevance of terrorists within the Gothic genre, exploring how authors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—mainly H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Boris Savinkov, and Liam O’Flaherty—adapted the Gothic as a literary vehicle by ironically invoking the Burkean sublime to expose both culture’s anxiety, and desire, for sensational stories on terrorism. I argue that these authors who ironically employ the sublime appropriate the Gothic to critique the press, such that the novel, which first employed the discourse of the Gothic, ends up debunking it. These authors assume that their readers recognize satirical or serious attempts to condemn sensational displays of terrorist violence. To a certain extent, they engage in terror tactics of their own with their depictions of political violence. They create a terrorizing, but pleasurable, experience for their readers who indulge in these stories of political violence, even if they do so to ultimately suggest that readers should condemn sensational accounts of terrorist violence. These authors’ portrayals of terrorist acts as Gothic spectacles and depictions of terrorists as protagonists of these novels often complicate their political purposes and challenge the reader’s moral stance on political violence. This project, therefore, contributes to Gothic studies a thematic lens to view the ways in which literary depictions of terror have been imagined in different cultures. It also contributes to the history of the novel as a form of discourse and broader discourses of terrorism and political violence, which provide important cultural antecedents to our contemporary understanding of the genre of the novel and terrorism as a political phenomenon. |
| Keyword | novel; twentieth-century literature; nineteenth-century literature; terrorism; political violence; Irish revolutionary history; Russian revolutionary history; anarchist history; journalism |
| Coverage era | Nineteenth Century; Twentieth Century |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m2626 |
| Rights | Malia, Jennifer Lynn |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-Malia-3204 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume56/etd-Malia-3204.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | ROMANCING THE BOMB: GOTHIC TERROR AND TERRORISM IN LATE NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE by Jennifer Lynn Malia A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH) December 2009 Copyright 2009 Jennifer Lynn Malia |
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