Speakers: Matthew Crofts & Janine Hatter, Post-Docs in English Literature, University of Hull. 

Abstract:

Rats in the popular Gothic imagination are deeply potent animals. As the harbingers of the Black Death not only do they represent disease and dying, but their links to such a fundamentally medieval disease makes them repositories of the past: just as they scurried across people’s feet and spread illness in the dark ages, so do they still. Rats feature heavily in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: `Rats, rats, rats! Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every one a life’, as well as two pieces of his short fiction: ‘The Judge’s House’ (1891) and ‘The Burial of Rats’ (1914). Stoker used rats as symbols of hauntings, the dispossessed and decaying nature. These examples demonstrate that the un-killable, constantly present, often unseen urban rat has remained a powerful vehicle for delivering horror.

Biographies:

Matthew Crofts is a post-doc at the University of Hull, as well as being a board member for the University’s Centre of Nineteenth-Century Studies. Matthew’s thesis examines the reoccurring elements of tyranny and torture across a range of Gothic novels and historical backgrounds. These include classic Gothic subjects such as the Spanish Inquisition, through to Victorian imperialism, to modern Gothic forms and science fiction hybrids.

Dr Janine Hatter’s research interests centre on nineteenth-century literature, art and culture, with particular emphasis on popular fiction. She has published on Mary Braddon, Bram Stoker, the theatre and identity, and Victorian women’s life writing. She co-orgainses the Victorian Popular Fiction Association, as well as it’s publishing strands: Key Popular Women Writers and New Paths in Victorian Literature and Culture.

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This talk is part of ‘Gothic Nature’ Tea-Time Talk Series

This series of talks celebrates the research and teaching of the Faculty of Arts, Culture and Education at the University of Hull.

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