Taxidermy and the Gothic - (Anthem Studies in Gothic Literature) by Elizabeth Effinger (Hardcover)

About the Book

Taxidermy and the Gothic: The Horror of Still Life is the first extended study of the Gothic's collusion with taxidermy. Focusing on contemporary cultural and material texts, it shows how taxidermy's imbrication with Gothic horror is more than skin deep: these are rich discourses stuffed by affinities for corporeal transgressions, the uncanny, and the counterfeit.

Book Synopsis

Taxidermy and the Gothic: The Horror of Still Life is the first extended study of the Gothic's collusion with taxidermy. It tells the story of the emergence in the long nineteenth century of the twin golden ages of the Gothic genre and the practice of taxidermy, and their shared rhetorical and narratological strategies, anxieties, and sensibilities. It follows the thread into twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture, including recent horror film, fiction, television, and visual arts. Like late Victorian Walter Potter's infamous taxidermied two-headed kitten, the Gothic and taxidermy are two discursive bodies, stuffed and stitched together. Moving beyond the well-worn path that treats taxidermy as a sentimental art or art of mourning, this book takes readers down a new dark trail, finding an overlooked but rich tradition in the Gothic that aligns it with the affective and corporeal work of horror (e.g., anxiety, hesitation, disgust) and the unsettling aesthetics, experiences, and pleasures that come with it. Over the course of four chapters, it argues that in addition to entwined origins, taxidermy's uncanny appearance in Gothic and horror texts, surprisingly overlooked in most criticism, is a driving force in generating fear. The core argument of the book is that taxidermy embodies the phenomenological horror of stuckness, of being-there. Taxidermy often sits, presiding over characters in critical moments in Gothic texts, sometimes foreshadowing their own fate (as in the case of Norman Bates's mother in Psycho, or the protagonist in Roald Dahl's short story "The Landlady"), but most frequently taxidermy works to amplify the affect of horror, generating anxiety over what will be forever preserved and never escaped: the violence of life. Key texts examined in this book are nineteenth-century taxidermy manuals and specimens, including the anthropomorphic work by notorious taxidermists Walter Potter and Charles Waterton; contemporary artistic taxidermy, with a focus on the shocking work by Scott Bibus, and Kate Clark; literary works, by authors such as H.G. Wells, and Claudia Rankine; and horror film and tele-series, with a focus on Get Out (2017), The Cabin in the Woods (2011), and Tell Me Your Secrets (2021). In short, taxidermy's imbrication with the Gothic is more than skin deep: these are rich discourses stuffed by affinities for corporeal transgressions, the uncanny, and the counterfeit. This book will help carve new scholarly directions in the bodies of Gothic and horror studies, animal studies, and art history and visual culture.

Book Series: Anthem Studies in Gothic Literature

Review Quotes

"Effinger's book deepens the conversation in animal studies. Here, we see the haunting connections of natural history and the gothic lurking in the stuffed animal skins. With adroit use of posthuman theory and archival research, Taxidermy and the Gothic describes the hauntology created in the past and that we inherit." --Ron Broglio, Arizona State University, USA.

"Elizabeth Effinger eloquently makes the case that taxidermy has been intertwined with Gothic horror from the nineteenth century to the present. This brilliant book--about the frozen stare of the taxidermied animal and the horror of stasis--is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the Gothic." --Dawn Keetley, Professor of English and Film, Lehigh University, USA.

"Stuffed full of valuable reflections on the fictional representation of taxidermy and its evolving engagement with epistemological, phenomenological, sexual, racial, and, of course, thanatological discourses, Effinger's highly original and captivating book is destined to become a timeless classic." --Dr. Xavier Aldana Reyes, author of Gothic Cinema (2020) and Body Gothic (2014).

A persuasive and fascinating exploration of the imbrication between two arts of darkness, Elizabeth Effinger's study painstakingly sheds light into the little-known world of taxidermy and how it haunts the periphery of other cultural forms for signification as filtered through the lens of the Gothic.--Andrew Hock Soon Ng, Monash University, Australia.

It is a complex book and full of interesting arguments. There is a current revival of interest in taxidermy. This is not to do with an increase in taxidermic practice; rather, it is an increasing awareness of the problematic political and cultural constellations that surrounded and formed taxidermy in the first place --David Punter, University of Bristol, UK.

Taxidermy has long played a key role in the production of gothic atmospheres. Taxidermy and the Gothic does the important work of bringing it from the background to the foreground, resulting in a complex, original, and thoughtful engagement with an under-examined vehicle for the uncanny.--Dr. Dara Downey, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

About the Author

Elizabeth Effinger is an associate professor of English at the University of New Brunswick. She is the co-editor of William Blake's Gothic Imagination: Bodies of Horror.