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Fear

Fear. Dracula and Darwin. Agenda. The Omnipresence of Dracula Fear and phobia Fear in / and Dracula (Aristotle, Freud, Marx) Literary Darwinism. Dracula is Everywhere!. Fiction Cartoons Film The Internet Video and computer games. Fear and phobia.

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Fear

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  1. Fear Dracula and Darwin

  2. Agenda • The Omnipresence of Dracula • Fear and phobia • Fear in / and Dracula (Aristotle, Freud, Marx) • Literary Darwinism

  3. Dracula is Everywhere! • Fiction • Cartoons • Film • The Internet • Video and computer games

  4. Fear and phobia • “The emotion of pain or uneasiness caused by the sense of impending danger, or by the prospect of some possible evil.” (OED) • ”A fear, horror, strong dislike, or aversion; esp. an extreme or irrational fear or dread aroused by a particular object or circumstance.” (OED)

  5. Fear in / and Dracula What produces fear in Dracula? What kind of fear is produced by Dracula? • Tragic: Pity and terror (Aristotle). • Gothic: The Uncanny (Freud). • The fear of liberal humanism: Capital (Marx) • Evolutionary: natural and sexual selection (Darwin)

  6. The fear of tragedy: Pity and terror. • Tragic hero; tragic flaw. • Hamlet: hesitation • Macbeth: ambition

  7. Gothic fear:The Uncanny • Das Unheimliche • Heimlich: a) homely, known; b) secret, hidden. • Unheimlich: unhomely, yet strangely familiar • Dracula = the uncanny: he (unconsciously) reminds us of our own Id. • The hunt for Dracula = (unconsciously) reminds us of our own Id, our repressed oedipal desires.

  8. The fear of liberal humanism: Capital • Liberal humanism: freedom, liberty, and equality • Money must have a moral end: amelioration, improving, making better, the human condition. • Monopolistic capitalism • The accumulation of capital is an end in itself • Dracula as an image of capitalism

  9. Evolutionary fear: Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1858) • Natural selection, or how to survive: • The bodies and minds of organisms are the result of evolved adaptations designed to help the organism survive in a particular environment • Organs, skin, bones • The senses • The emotions: fear

  10. Evolutionary fear: Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) • Sexual selection, or how to secure a mate: • Organisms (male / female) can evolve traits designed to secure a mate (female / male) through attraction or competition • The peacock’s tail • Antlers • Beauty • Courtship (dating) rituals and conventions

  11. Attraction and Sexual Selection

  12. Competition and Sexual Selection

  13. Beauty and Sexual Selection

  14. Courtship and Sexual Selection

  15. Courtship and Sexual Selection

  16. A receipt for courtship (1805)

  17. A receipt for courtship (1805) • Two or three dears, and two or three sweets; • Two or three balls, and two or three treats; • Two or three serenades, given as a lure; • Two or three oaths how much they endure; • Two or three messages sent in a day; • Two or three times led out from the play; • Two or three soft speeches made by the way; • Two or three tickets for two or three times; • Two or three love letters writ all in rhymes; • Two or three months keeping strict to these rules, • Can never fail making a couple of fools.

  18. Literary Darwinism • “One thing literature offers is data. Fast, inexhaustible, cross-cultural and cheap.” (Jonathan Gotschall). • Literature is data that helps elucidating human nature

  19. Literary Darwinism • General aim: • To demonstrate that human behaviour is the result of innate rather than culturally specific patterns • To identify the universals of life: child bearing and rearing, love, efforts to acquire resources (money, property, influence) and competition and cooperation within families, groups, and communities.

  20. First focus: Characters and action as referencing universal patterns of behaviour • Pride and Prejudice • 2nd generation: Women compete to marry high-status men. Men compete to marry the most attractive women): • Darcy • Elizabeth • Wickham • Lydia • 1st generation: By marrying off their daughters to the right males, parents secure that their genetic material is passed on in the most effective way. • Mrs Bennett • Mr Bennett

  21. First focus: Characters and action as referencing universal patterns of behaviour • Hamlet • Hamlet’s dilemma is personal and political and biological and genetic: Either Hamlet rises to power by killing his uncle, i.e. his mother’s new husband or he lets his uncle live, paving the way for a batch of half-brothers and – sisters with whom he has genes in common.

  22. First focus: Characters and action as referencing universal patterns of behaviour • But what about: • The narrator? (irony) • The genre? (the novel, drama) • The medium? (writing, the stage) • Modes and periods?

  23. Second focus: What is the point, purpose, and end of literature? Why do human beings read and write fiction? • Literature instructs us (Horace: To teach and delight): • It teaches us about space, time, and patterns of cause and effect, making us more adaptive and more capable of passing on our genes. • Literature is designed to help us cope with life’s complexity: enhances our interpretative competences. • Literature is a kind of fitness training: by imagining situations you stand a better chance of succeeding when they occur in real life. • Strong narrative bias: what about, for instance, lyric poetry? What about rhyme? Metre?

  24. Second focus: What is the point, purpose, and end of literature? Why do human beings read and write fiction? • Literature is a sex display designed to waste the competition (antlers) • Rarely handed down, though!

  25. Second focus: What is the point, purpose, and end of literature? Why do human beings read and write fiction? • Literature is a sign of abundant resources (material, physical, psychological) • By its utter uselessness, literature is a sign of the fact that the reader or writer has resources to spare (the peacock’s tail) • Rarely handed down, though!

  26. Second focus: What is the point, purpose, and end of literature? Why do human beings read and write fiction? • Literature is a community builder • Literature integrates humans into a single culture. Cultural and social cohesion produces survival advantages. • But are cultural communities really unifying in this way? Today?

  27. Second focus: What is the point, purpose, and end of literature? Why do human beings read and write fiction? • Literature is a kind of magic, religion, or wish fulfilment. • We like to tell and listen to stories of success in order to ensure success in the future. • But this seems a bit like sublimation?

  28. Dracula and the issue of natural selection • Dracula does not concern natural selection, or the evolutionary struggle to survive through adaption • Humans and vampires do not compete over the limited resources • Host – parasite, prey - predator

  29. Dracula and the issue of sexual selection • Jonathan Harker and the three female vampires (51-52)

  30. Dracula and the issue of sexual selection • Lucy Westenra and her three male suitors (Quincy Morris, Dr Seward, Arthur Holmwood) pp. 73-77

  31. Dracula and the issue of sexual selection • Lucy’s sleepwalking (p. 108)

  32. Dracula and the issue of sexual selection • Mina satirising New Woman as sexual selector (111)

  33. Dracula and the issue of sexual selection • Vampire Lucy’s preference for Arthur (253-54)

  34. Dracula and the issue of sexual selection • Mina’s refusal of Dracula: • Seward’s point of view (336) • Mina’s point of view (343)

  35. Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the issue of sexual selection • The Dracula and Mina scene

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