Bill Hughes
Co-organiser of the Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture Project at the University of Hertfordshire.
In the Open Graves, Open Minds Project, we unearthed depictions of the vampire and the undead in literature, art, and other media, before embracing shapeshifters and other supernatural beings and their worlds. OGOM opens up questions concerning genre, gender, hybridity, cultural change, and other realms. The Project extends to all narratives of the fantastic, the folkloric, the fabulous, and the magical.
I was awarded my PhD in English Literature by research at the University of Sheffield in 2010. My research is on the eighteenth-century dialogue as a genre and on the dialogic nature of Enlightenment thought in general. I have also published on Richard Hoggart. I am currently doing research and publishing on contemporary paranormal romance' fiction, and on the use of Linked Data to represent intertextuality. I am continuing my work on communicative rationality and the Enlightenment dialogue in relation to the formation of the English novel. This apparently disparate research is not unfocussed; it has at its core my concerns with the Enlightenment as viewed through the theory of Habermas and the Marxist tradition.
My thesis begins with an exploration of eighteenth-century theories of language, many of which posit an originary dialogue. I consider Mandeville’s theories in The Fable of the Bees, James Harris’s Hermes, Lord Monboddo’s Of the Origin and Progress of Language, and, briefly, Adam Smith, Condillac, and Rousseau.
The second chapter considers the harmonious, consensual, and hedonistic nature of some eighteenth-century dialogues by looking at Aphra Behn’s translation of Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, A Discovery of New Worlds; Shaftesbury’s The Moralists; Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees once more; and Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
The thesis then explores the antagonistic, polemic nature of dialogues, looking at Berkeley’s Alciphron, and some neglected dialogues of the 1790s, both radical and conservative; Thomas Day, Sir William Jones, Thomas Spence, and in response, writers such as Hannah More.
Finally, I depict the absorption of the genre into the novel: Richardson’s Pamela, Sarah Fielding’s The Cry, and novels of the 1790s, radical and anti-Jacobin, such as Robert Bage’s Hermsprong, are treated in depth. The overall argument reveals a new facet of the ‘Rise of the Novel’ debate; my thesis being that the richness of the eighteenth-century dialogue, owing much to the dialogic context within which it flourished, contributed significantly to the development of the novel.
Supervisors: Dr Hamish Mathison
In the Open Graves, Open Minds Project, we unearthed depictions of the vampire and the undead in literature, art, and other media, before embracing shapeshifters and other supernatural beings and their worlds. OGOM opens up questions concerning genre, gender, hybridity, cultural change, and other realms. The Project extends to all narratives of the fantastic, the folkloric, the fabulous, and the magical.
I was awarded my PhD in English Literature by research at the University of Sheffield in 2010. My research is on the eighteenth-century dialogue as a genre and on the dialogic nature of Enlightenment thought in general. I have also published on Richard Hoggart. I am currently doing research and publishing on contemporary paranormal romance' fiction, and on the use of Linked Data to represent intertextuality. I am continuing my work on communicative rationality and the Enlightenment dialogue in relation to the formation of the English novel. This apparently disparate research is not unfocussed; it has at its core my concerns with the Enlightenment as viewed through the theory of Habermas and the Marxist tradition.
My thesis begins with an exploration of eighteenth-century theories of language, many of which posit an originary dialogue. I consider Mandeville’s theories in The Fable of the Bees, James Harris’s Hermes, Lord Monboddo’s Of the Origin and Progress of Language, and, briefly, Adam Smith, Condillac, and Rousseau.
The second chapter considers the harmonious, consensual, and hedonistic nature of some eighteenth-century dialogues by looking at Aphra Behn’s translation of Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, A Discovery of New Worlds; Shaftesbury’s The Moralists; Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees once more; and Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
The thesis then explores the antagonistic, polemic nature of dialogues, looking at Berkeley’s Alciphron, and some neglected dialogues of the 1790s, both radical and conservative; Thomas Day, Sir William Jones, Thomas Spence, and in response, writers such as Hannah More.
Finally, I depict the absorption of the genre into the novel: Richardson’s Pamela, Sarah Fielding’s The Cry, and novels of the 1790s, radical and anti-Jacobin, such as Robert Bage’s Hermsprong, are treated in depth. The overall argument reveals a new facet of the ‘Rise of the Novel’ debate; my thesis being that the richness of the eighteenth-century dialogue, owing much to the dialogic context within which it flourished, contributed significantly to the development of the novel.
Supervisors: Dr Hamish Mathison
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Books by Bill Hughes
history of literary vampirism and his novella, despite its seminal character
(Christopher Frayling calls it ‘probably the most influential horror story of
all time’), has never been the subject of a book- length critical study until
now. This is the introduction to our book which traces Polidori’s bloodsucking progeny and his disquieting legacy in literature and other media. We present new perspectives on both the genesis of The Vampyre and its still- flourishing legacy.
centuries. The role literature plays in mythologising such children reveals much about shifting ideas of animality and humanity, and of narrative itself. In this piece, I focus on eighteenth-century encounters with wolf children, their representation in the poetry of the Romantic period and the legacy of this in accounts of the twentieth century (particularly following the discovery of the wolf-girls Amala and Kamala in 1920) and the present day. I interrogate the representation of wolf-children in relation to John Locke’s tabula rasa theory and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the ‘state of nature’, together with debates that emerged around these concerning native innocence and the Christian doctrine of original sin. Wolf-children in historical accounts rarely acquire language (or are limited to a few words); I demonstrate how literature constructs a history for these children through repeated storytelling.
A coherent narrative follows Enlightenment studies of the vampire’s origins in folklore and folk panics, the sources of vampire fiction, through Romantic incarnations in Byron and Polidori to Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Further essays discuss the Undead in the context of Dracula, fin-de-siècle decadence, Nazi Germany and early cinematic treatments. The rise of the sympathetic vampire is charted from Coppola’s film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight. More recent manifestations in novels, TV, Goth subculture, young adult fiction and cinema are dealt with in discussions of True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and much more.
Featuring distinguished contributors, including a prominent novelist, and aimed at interdisciplinary scholars or postgraduate students, it will also appeal to aficionados of creative writing and Undead enthusiasts."
Papers by Bill Hughes