The Last Man and Gothic Sympathy

By Michael Cameron

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1009357530
• ISBN13: 9781009357531
• Release Date: March 2024
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 75 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"