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- Title
Abominable Transformations: Becoming-Fungus in Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams.
- Authors
Camara, Anthony
- Abstract
This paper examines the role fungi play in Arthur Machen's Decadent classic The Hill of Dreams (1907), a supernatural novel written in the 1890s. Ostensibly an idiosyncratic topic, the novel's concern with these organisms devolves on an inquiry into the nature of life itself, of whether it is the result of a spiritual life-force or a haphazard assemblage of matter. In this way, Machen's novel participates in the fin de siècle debates between vitalism and materialism. Rather than attempting to resolve this debate, the novel seizes on tensions inherent in fungal life in order to dissolve the concept of life altogether, to suggest its horrifying unreality.
- Subjects
HILL of Dreams, The (Book); MACHEN, Arthur, 1863-1947; FUNGI; LITERATURE; VITALISM; MATERIALISM in literature; LIFE in literature
- Publication
Gothic Studies, 2014, Vol 16, Issue 1, p9
- ISSN
1362-7937
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.7227/GS.16.1.2