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Series:   Elements in the Gothic

The Last Man and Gothic Sympathy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2024

Michael Cameron
Michael Cameron
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University

Summary

This Element explores the theme of 'Gothic sympathy' as it appears in a collection of 'Last Man' novels. A liminal site of both possibility and irreconcilability, Gothic sympathy at once challenges the anthropocentric bias of traditional notions of sympathetic concern, premising compassionate relations with other beings – animal, vegetal, etc. – beyond the standard measure of the liberal-humanist subject, and at the same time acknowledges the horror that is the ineluctable and untranslatable otherness accompanying, interrupting, and shaping such a sympathetic connection. Many examples of 'Last Man' fiction explore the dialectical impasse of Gothic sympathy by dramatizing complicated relationships between a lone liberal-humanist subject and other-than-human or posthuman subjects that will persist beyond humanity's extinction. Such confrontations as they appear in Mary Shelley's The Last Man, H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend will be explored.
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Keywords

Gothicsympathylast manapocalypsescience fiction
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in the Gothic
Online ISBN: 9781009357500
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 28 March 2024

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