Dark Nights, Bright Lights: Night, Darkness, and Illumination in Literature

✍ Scribed by Susanne Bach, Folkert Degenring

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 242
• Series: Buchreihe Der Anglia / Anglia Book 50
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Light and darkness shape our perception of the world. This is true in a literal sense, but also metaphorically: in theology, philosophy, literature and the arts the light of day signifies life, safety, knowledge and all that is good, while the darkness of the night suggests death, danger, ignorance and evil. A closer inspection, however, reveals that things are not quite so clear cut and that light and darkness cannot be understood as simple binary opposites. On a biological level, for example, daylight and darkness are inseparable factors in the calibration of our circadian rhythms, and a lack of periodical darkness appears to be as contrary to health as a lack of exposure to sunlight. On a cultural level, too, night and darkness are far from being universally condemnable: in fiction, drama and poetry the darkness of the night allows not only nightmares but also dreams, it allows criminals to ply their trade and allows lovers to meet, it allows the pursuit of pleasure as well as deep thought, it allows metamorphoses, transformations and transgressions unthinkable in the light of day. But night is not merely darkness. The night gains significance as an alternative space, as an 'other of the day', only when it is at least partially illuminated. The volume examines the interconnection of night, darkness and nocturnal illumination across a broad range of literary texts. The individual essays examine historically specific light conditions in literature, tracing the symbolic and metaphoric content of darkness and illumination and the attitudes towards them.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Introduction: Dark Nights, Bright Lights
City Nights, City Lights in London Literature of the 1890s
“The Hours of the Day and the Night Are Ours Equally”: Dracula and the Lighting Technologies of Victorian London
“Light of Life”: Gender, Place, and Knowledge in H.G. Wells’ Ann Veronica
The Literary Realisation of Electric Light in the Early 20^th Century: Artificial Illumination in H. G. Wells and E.M. Forster
Public and Private Light in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day
Serenading the Night in Benjamin Britten’s Opus 31
Darkness Visible: Night, Light, and Liminality in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and Jed Rubenfeld’s The Death Instinct
The Blackout of Community: Charlotte Jones’ The Dark
Genre, Gender, Mythology: Functions of Light and Darkness in Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay and Thud!
Twenty Thousand Lights Hanging from the Ceiling: Ecocatastrophe in Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles
On Behalf of the Dark? Functionalisations of Light Pollution in Fiction
Index
About the Contributors