Maria Cohut
Simulacrum:
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an image or representation of someone or something
an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute
Oxford Dictionaries Online. Oxford University Press. n.d. Web. 2 Sept. 2012
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anthropomorphic physical representation
Original figure (Alfonso, Madonna, Matilda)
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“[T]rauma curiously wavers between inner and
outer worlds” (16)
Chrysochou, Panayiota, “The Si(eye)ght of Trauma: Oedipal Wounds, Tragic
Visions, and Averted Gazes from the Time of Sophocles to the Twenty-First
Century”, Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies, vol 1, no 1, spring 2012
(pp 15-26)
• “The erotic intention that
unleashes the melancholic
disorder presents itself as that
which would possess and touch
what ought merely to be the object
of contemplation, and the tragic
insanity of the saturnine
temperament thus finds its root in
the intimate contradiction of a
gesture that would embrace the
Unobtainable.” (17-18)
Agamben, Giorgio. Stanzas –
Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, trans.
Kneeling knight effigy, Tewkesbury Abbey
Ronald L. Martinez (Minneapolis; London:
http://www.tewkesburyabbey.org.uk/floorplan
University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
• “I know the adoration with which I look at that picture is
uncommon – but I am not in love with a coloured pannel.
The character of that virtuous prince, the veneration with
which my mother has inspired me for his memory, the
orisons which I know not why she has enjoined me to
pour fourth at his tomb, all have concurred to persuade me
that somehow or other my destiny is linked to something
relating to him.” (41)
Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto – A Gothic Story, ed. W.S. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996)
• “[S]ubstantive meaning is created through the chain of
verbal and nonlinguistic signifiers that instantiate the
mediation between self and other, object and idea. When this
does not happen there is a failure in translation, a failure to
assimilate the signifiers of one’s history into a unifying and
cohesive narrative. I use “translation” deliberately here. A
failure in translation is what happens when the nonlinguistic
signifier as image fails to bind itself to a signified (meaning/
concept) or signifieds.” (21)
Chrysochou, Panayiota, “The Si(eye)ght of Trauma: Oedipal Wounds, Tragic Visions, and
Averted Gazes from the Time of Sophocles to the Twenty-First Century”, Journal of Literature
and Trauma Studies, vol 1, no 1, spring 2012 (pp 15-26)
• The Gothic genre tends to gravitate around issues
concerning “the family structure – at once cognitive model
and material reality – [which] incarnates the laws fundamental
to our culture and our selves; laws that also govern our
thinking about property, morality, social behaviour, and even
metaphysics”. (12)
Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness – A Poetics of Gothic (Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1995)
• “Theodore’s grief was too fresh to admit the thought of
another love; and it was not till after frequent discourses with
Isabella, of his dear Matilda, that he was persuaded he could
know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he
could forever indulge the melancholy that had taken
possession of his soul.” (115)
Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto – A Gothic Story, ed. W.S. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996)
• “[T]he withdrawal of melancholic libido has no other
purpose than to make viable an appropriation in a situation in
which none is really possible”. (20)
Agamben, Giorgio. Stanzas – Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, trans. Ronald L. Martinez
(Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
• “This for two years had been the
Object of his increasing wonder and
adoration.” (40)
Sandro Botticelli,
Madonna with Child
(detail)
• “Oh! If such a Creature existed,
and existed but for me! Were I
permitted to [...] press with my lips
the treasures of that snowy bosom!
Gracious God, should I then resist
the temptation?” (41)
Lewis, Matthew. The Monk, ed. Howard Anderson
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
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“[M]aternity turns out to be [a] [...] fantasy of a lost
continent: what is involved [...] is not so much an
idealized primitive mother as [...] an idealization of
primary narcissism”. (133)
Kristeva, Julia. “Stabat Mater”, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Poetics Today, vol. 6, no.
1/2, The Female Body in Western Culture: Semiotic Perspectives, 1985 (pp 133152)
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“It is only when Matilda discards submission that
she, as the double of the Madonna portrait, no
longer satisfies.” (47)
“When Matilda transgresses the boundary of ideal,
feminine behaviour and becomes masterful, she no
longer doubles the Madonna portrait and
consequently no longer mirrors Ambrosio’s
desires.” (47)
Wright, Angela. “European disruptions of the idealized woman: Matthew Lewis’s
The Monk and the Marquis de Sade’s La Nouvelle Justine”. European Gothic
– A Spirited Exchange 1760-1960, ed. Avril Horner (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2002)
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Clemente Susini, Anatomical Venus
(wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood)
ca 1790, Florence
“Deliberately, Lewis compares [Antonia] to a statue, not of the
Virgin nor of a saint but of the pagan goddess of love.” (133)
Ellis, Kate Ferguson. The Contested Castle – Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic
Ideology (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989)
“By dying, a beautiful Woman serves as the motive for the
creation of an art work and as its object of representation. As a
deanimated body, she can also become an art object or be
compared with one.” (71)
Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body – Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1992)