The Man Who Crucified Himself

The Man Who Crucified Himself
Author: Maria Böhmer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2018-11-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9004353607

The Man Who Crucified Himself is the history of a sensational nineteenth-century medical case. In 1805 a shoemaker called Mattio Lovat attempted to crucify himself in Venice. His act raised a furore, and the story spread across Europe. For the rest of the century Lovat’s case fuelled scientific and popular debates on medicine, madness, suicide and religion. Drawing on Italian, German, English and French sources, Maria Böhmer traces the multiple readings of the case and identifies various 'interpretive communities'. Her meticulously researched study sheds new light on Lovat’s case and offers fresh insights on the case narrative as a genre - both epistemic and literary.

Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England

Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England
Author: Anna Kay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2023-09-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000933075

Gender, Crime, and Murder in Victorian England seeks to provide a comprehensive examination of the notorious Mannings' ‘Bermondsey murder’, and its wider implications in Victorian criminal narrative and popular culture. Exploring the ongoing textual afterlife of Maria Manning, including significant literary contributions by Charles Dickens through his characters Mademoiselle Hortense and Madame Defarge, this volume illuminates representations both echoed and challenged in mid-nineteenth-century conceptions of gender, sexuality, class, nationality, religion, and criminality. This volume also examines the five largely forgotten cases of female homicide from the same year and the imagined discourse perpetuated in fictional personifications. Utilising a wide breadth of literary and historical research, this volume provides readers with a thorough understanding of the various cultural implications of crime and gender in the Victorian period to be read, remembered, and reinterpreted today. Located simultaneously in the fields of feminist, historical, and literary criticism, this volume is invaluable to students of nineteenth-century literature and culture, and researchers with an interest in criminology and media culture.

Gender and the Representation of Evil

Gender and the Representation of Evil
Author: Lynne Fallwell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2016-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315531550

This edited collection examines gendered representations of "evil" in history, the arts, and literature. Scholars often explore the relationships between gender, sex, and violence through theories of inequality, violence against women, and female victimization, but what happens when women are the perpetrators of violent or harmful behavior? How do we define "evil"? What makes evil men seem different from evil women? When women commit acts of violence or harmful behavior, how are they represented differently from men? How do perceptions of class, race, and age influence these representations? How have these representations changed over time, and why? What purposes have gendered representations of evil served in culture and history? What is the relationship between gender, punishment of evil behavior, and equality?

Victorians Against the Gallows

Victorians Against the Gallows
Author: James Gregory
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857730886

By the time that Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, the list of crimes liable to attract the death penalty had effectively been reduced to murder. Yet, despite this, the gallows remained a source of controversy in Victorian Britain and there was a growing unease in liberal quarters surrounding the question of capital punishment. Unease was expressed in various forms, including efforts at outright abolition. Focusing in part on the activities of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, James Gregory here examines abolitionist strategies, leaders and personnel. He locates the 'gallows question' in an imperial context and explores the ways in which debates about the gallows and abolition featured in literature, from poetry to 'novels of purpose' and popular romances of the underworld. He places the abolitionist movement within the wider Victorian worlds of philanthropy, religious orthodoxy and social morality in a study which will be essential reading for students and researchers of Victorian history.