From the Publisher
“Sullivan takes the reader on a sensational, corporeal journey through the Victorian obsession with ancient Egypt and its unique position to be used as a conduit to confront the fragilities and consequences of Empire in the Egyptianised Gothic. By exploring how authors of this genre incorporated instances of touch, smell, sound, sight and taste, Sullivan expertly crafts an image of the British Empire's grappling with fears of subversion and retaliation through, with the relics of ancient Egypt front and centre. Egyptianised Gothic Fiction and the Senses is a powerful, comprehensive book that will forever alter how you interact with ancient Egyptianised media past and present.” (Raven Todd DaSilva- The Other Ancient Civilisations: Decoding Archaeology's Less-Celebrated Cultures)
“In this work, Sullivan brings sensory studies, ancient Egypt reception studies, literary studies, and studies of cultural history more broadly to bear on a rich body of texts not thoroughly examined in any other single scholarly work. Delving into the Egyptianised Gothic one sense at a time—a fascinating approach that offers unique insights into sensual engagements with the past—Sullivan also uncovers how the sensory encounters in these narratives can undermine imperial power structures, allowing the empire to reach, gaze, or invade right back. Egyptianised Gothic Fiction and the Senses beautifully illuminates the embodied encounter with the ancient past at the turn of the twentieth century.” (Angie Blumberg, Ph.D. Lecturer, Department of English, Auburn University)
“Sullivan’s study casts a wide net and lingers on underexplored gems of the Egyptianised Gothic as well as the better-known contributions to the genre by the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker. Her book is as valuable for its unearthing of rare resources – often short fiction published in magazines – as it is for its sustained exploration of sensory engagements with ancient Egyptian bodies in fiction, from the years leading up to Britain’s occupation of Egypt in 1882 to the end of the First World War. It is, as such, attentive to all kinds of hierarchies at work in the late Victorian and Edwardian cultural imaginary pertaining to race, gender, and even the senses themselves, along with the literary material that reflected and, in some cases, challenged the assumptions and biases on which such hierarchies relied.” (Dr Eleanor Dobson, Associate Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature, University of Birmingham)
“Jay Sullivan explores with great panache the sensory discourses of the Egyptian Gothic in a work of staggeringly encyclopaedic knowledge, range, and scope. Sullivan’s sensory studies approach is a unique and “flavourful” one; she take as her primary focus the discourses of touch, sight, smell, sound, and taste in relation to Gothic works of fiction centred on ancient Egypt, offering up a veritable feast for the senses and shining a light on the perhaps overlooked and largely forgotten subgenre of “mummy fiction” (overshadowed as it has been by vampire fiction). Egyptian Gothic is rigorous, comprehensive, analytical, and – in places – genuinely very funny.” (Ian Kinane, Reader in Popular Literature and Culture, University of Roehampton, London)
“In an insightful and groundbreaking new study of an underrated moment in literary history, Jay Sullivan examines the largest sample to date of Egyptian Gothic literature, not by imposing extraneous analytical categories, but by harnessing the genre’s own, long-forgotten symbolic language of the senses. This innovative approach reveals that tales of revenant mummies – replete with intense and evocative accounts of their appearance, sound, scent and tactility – were the fevered withdrawal symptoms of imperialists addicted to visceral encounters with the Egyptian dead as museums began to imprison the objects of their desire behind glass, out of reach. Now the hypnotic gaze, intoxicating odour and corrupting touch of fantastical mummies embodied the threats posed by modernity to the old colonial order, even as they also enacted revenge upon the British Empire for its figurative rape of Egypt.” (Dr Jasmine Day, author of “The Mummy's Curse: Mummymania in the English-speaking World”)
“This body of research offers a consideration of the Egyptianised Gothic in relation to the five primary senses, and to what extent this contributes to the broader scope of Egyptomania in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Witty, illustrative, and fundamentally fascinating, this comprehensive study brings together criticisms of the Gothic, visual culture, museum studies, and literary analysis. Sullivan draws attention to the sensory reception of ‘mummy fiction’, and how Egypt’s resurrected past battles against the British Empire. A Gothic sensory treat!” (Lauren Bruce, founder of The International Society for the Study of Egyptomania (ISSE))
