The Shadow of Mal: Gothic Romance and Victorian Ghosts in ‘Inception’

Christopher Nolan is acclaimed for his cinematic hybridization of multiple genres, ranging from thriller and science fiction to heist drama and superhero narratives. His use of literary themes in movie-making is especially prominent given that Nolan often writes character-driven stories with psychological depth and moral complexity. In his 2010 heist film, Inception, Nolan experiments with the narrative mechanics of Gothic romance through the story of Dom Cobb, a professional thief who extracts information by infiltrating his subjects’ dreams. Cobb’s inability

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Film Review: The Invisible Woman (2014)

Charlotte Mathieson, University of Warwick February 7th marked two years since the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, and with it the release of The Invisible Woman: the film adaptation by screenwriter Abi Morgan, directed by Ralph Fiennes, of Claire Tomalin’s 1990 biography of Nelly Ternan, the woman who was Dickens’s mistress from 1857 until his death in 1870. At the time of its publication Tomalin’s biography caused controversy among some, but has since become mostly accepted as a credible and valuable

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What We Know about What Maisie Knew: A Critical Conversation

By Ryan D. Fong, Kalamazoo College, & Victoria Ford Smith, University of Connecticut The following conversation took place via e-mail in July and August 2013, after we each viewed the most recent film adaptation of Henry James’s 1897 novel, What Maisie Knew.  In the collaborative spirit of the film’s directors, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, we decided to write a joint review, analyzing the film from our respective areas of expertise. What Maisie Knew is still playing in select theatres,

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Avoiding those Madding Crowds: Date Night with Thomas Hardy

Ryan D. Fong Kalamazoo College For most of our readership across the United States and in the UK, April is proving to be a very cruel month indeed—with severe weather patterns and cold fronts marching across the North America and Atlantic. In these frigid days and dank nights, in which we grow ever wearier of these lingering and intemperate climes, what is a good Victorianist to do? The options would seem (at least to this Victorianist) to either sink into

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Roundtable on Paul St George’s Telectroscope – Paul St George

The post below is Paul St George’s initial response to the questions posed in the JVC Online roundtable on Paul St George’s Telectroscope. Paul St George is an artist and the creator of the Telectroscope. To view the questions and ongoing conversation, as well as the other participants’ initial responses, use the links below. Questions & Ongoing Conversation || Jay Clayton || David L. Pike || Paul St George I thought I would join this conversation by answering one of

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Vibrators, the New Women and One Naughty Queen: Film Review of ‘Hysteria’

by Fern Riddell (King’s College, London) Since 2011, I have waited with bated breath for the release of Tanya Wexler’s new film Hysteria, which stars Rupert Everret as a sexually deviant, technologically gifted billionaire playboy – the Victorian Bruce Wayne of the sex aid industry – Maggie Gyllenhaal as a feisty, do-gooding, chest-beating early suffragette, and Hugh Dancy as a young, forward-thinking, if not always forward-looking, doctor with a great idea. With brilliant support from Jonathan Pryce, Felicity Jones, and

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Dickens and Mass Culture

Dickens and Mass Culture, by Juliet John, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, xii + 321 pp., £50.00 (hardback), ISBN: 987-0-19-925792-8 Dickens studies needs this book; the first to wrestle, in a detailed way, with Dickens’s strangely overlooked relationship with mass culture. Juliet John provides some complex answers to questions such as: What was the basis for Dickens’s extraordinary popularity? Why has it persisted from his age to ours? How have relationships with Dickens changed? What makes Dickens so translatable “across

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