Document Type

Honors Thesis

Major

English

Advisor(s)

James Brophy

Committee Members

Jonathan Barron, Jordan LaBouff

Graduation Year

May 2024

Publication Date

Spring 5-2024

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and understand the rapid popularity of horror literature in the 1880s and 1890s through a literary style known as decadent Gothic. To do this, I will analyze two keystone texts of the style: Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. This analysis will be done using a framework of London’s nineteenth-century urbanization to understand the represented fears in both texts. This thesis shows that urbanization created a decentralized environment full of frightening stimuli, and that decadent Gothic literature, like the two texts, offered catharsis by exploring those specific fears in a safe manner.

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