Maria Cohut

Simulacrum:

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

anthropomorphic physical representation

Arti

ficia

l lik

enes

s (ef

figy,

icon

, por

trait)

Double of likeness (Theodore, M

atilda, Antonia)

Original figure (Alfonso, Madonna, Matilda)

“[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)

Kneeling knight effigy, Tewkesbury Abbeyhttp://www.tewkesburyabbey.org.uk/floorplan

• “The erotic intention thatunleashes the melancholicdisorder presents itself as thatwhich would possess and touchwhat ought merely to be the objectof contemplation, and the tragicinsanity of the saturninetemperament thus finds its root inthe intimate contradiction of agesture that would embrace theUnobtainable.” (17-18)

Agamben, Giorgio. Stanzas – Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, trans.

Ronald L. Martinez (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)

• “I know the adoration with which I look at that picture isuncommon – but I am not in love with a coloured pannel.The character of that virtuous prince, the veneration withwhich my mother has inspired me for his memory, theorisons which I know not why she has enjoined me topour fourth at his tomb, all have concurred to persuade methat somehow or other my destiny is linked to somethingrelating 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 ofverbal and nonlinguistic signifiers that instantiate themediation between self and other, object and idea. When thisdoes not happen there is a failure in translation, a failure toassimilate the signifiers of one’s history into a unifying andcohesive narrative. I use “translation” deliberately here. Afailure in translation is what happens when the nonlinguisticsignifier 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 issuesconcerning “the family structure – at once cognitive modeland material reality – [which] incarnates the laws fundamentalto our culture and our selves; laws that also govern ourthinking about property, morality, social behaviour, and evenmetaphysics”. (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 ofanother love; and it was not till after frequent discourses withIsabella, of his dear Matilda, that he was persuaded he couldknow no happiness but in the society of one with whom hecould forever indulge the melancholy that had takenpossession 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)

Sandro Botticelli,Sandro Botticelli,Madonna with ChildMadonna with Child(detail)(detail)

• “This for two years had been theObject of his increasing wonder andadoration.” (40)

• “Oh! If such a Creature existed,and existed but for me! Were Ipermitted to [...] press with my lipsthe treasures of that snowy bosom!Gracious God, should I then resistthe temptation?” (41)

Lewis, Matthew. The Monk, ed. Howard Anderson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

“[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 133-

152)

“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)

“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)

Clemente Susini, Clemente Susini, Anatomical VenusAnatomical Venus (wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood)(wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood)

ca 1790, Florence ca 1790, Florence