Degenerate Fictions:
By the end of the 19th Century, the Western world read into the work of
Darwin, Haeckel, et. al. an explanation for one of its oldest ideas:
that some among us are degenerates, morbid deviations from an original
type. The new explanation? Degenerates have not evolved as far as the
rest of us; they are unfinished throwbacks to a previous era.
How did/does literature address the concept of degenerates and
degeneration? Who is a degenerate? Who degenerates? What characters
or settings reveal the inherent stigmata of degeneracy?
Naturalist fiction immediately suggests itself, but I also invite
proposals on literary degeneracy from a non-Western perspective or from
pre- or post- 19th Century.
Email 250-500 word abstracts by March 12, 2004 to:
Vincent Fitzgerald
Assistant Professor of English
Notre Dame de Namur University
vfitzgerald@ndnu.edu
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