Gothic Infections: Henry Tilney and Storytelling as Therapy

This article proposes, a reading of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818) as a case study for discussing infectious literature, storytelling as therapy and the interconnectedness of Gothic methodologies and medical humanities. Northanger Abbey was written in a period when women’s reading habits was a contested topic, so I will provide a quick historical overview of the period and the problematic Gothic novel, which Northanger Abbey satirizes. Where previous research has focused on Catherine Morland, the protagonist and ‘misreader’ in this Gothic satire, this article will focus on Austen’s feminized hero, Henry Tilney, and read him in the role of a mesmeric healer. His goal is to cure Catherine of her obsession with Gothic novels, in order for her to fulfil the feminine ideal of the time. The mesmeric method is to produce a crisis in the patient, however, I will show how Henry’s plan fails and he inadvertently produces a crisis in himself, and forces him to realize the extent of his own ‘reading illness’. He is ‘infected’ by the masculine literary canon, which in his mind entails literary superiority over Catherine and his sister Eleanor. Storytelling as therapy is a term that connects literature and trauma into a method of organizing experience. My analysis will focus on a selection of dialogue between the main characters and Henry’s monologues, to highlight where Austen’s hero is compelled to take narrative control as a way to control his own trauma; his troubled relationship with his father and the death of his mother

Gothic Infections: Henry Tilney and Storytelling as Therapy

This article proposes, a reading of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818) as a case study for discussing infectious literature, storytelling as therapy and the interconnectedness of Gothic methodologies and medical humanities. Northanger Abbey was written in a period when women’s reading habits was a contested topic, so I will provide a quick historical overview of the period and the problematic Gothic novel, which Northanger Abbey satirizes. Where previous research has focused on Catherine Morland, the protagonist and ‘misreader’ in this Gothic satire, this article will focus on Austen’s feminized hero, Henry Tilney, and read him in the role of a mesmeric healer. His goal is to cure Catherine of her obsession with Gothic novels, in order for her to fulfil the feminine ideal of the time. The mesmeric method is to produce a crisis in the patient, however, I will show how Henry’s plan fails and he inadvertently produces a crisis in himself, and forces him to realize the extent of his own ‘reading illness’. He is ‘infected’ by the masculine literary canon, which in his mind entails literary superiority over Catherine and his sister Eleanor. Storytelling as therapy is a term that connects literature and trauma into a method of organizing experience. My analysis will focus on a selection of dialogue between the main characters and Henry’s monologues, to highlight where Austen’s hero is compelled to take narrative control as a way to control his own trauma; his troubled relationship with his father and the death of his mother

Rethinking access: key methodological challenges in studying energy companies

Understanding the role of large energy corporations in society is a crucial, yet challenging task for the social science of energy. Ethnographic methods hold potential for plying into corporations’ own self-representations, to reveal the relations of power and politics that determine flows of energy and extractive capital at the global and local level. Ethnography help us move beyond structural analyses, to locate the agents and processes at work within economies of energy production, and identify tensions and dynamics both within the corporation and at the interface with society. We argue that a multi-method and reflexive approach can help social scientists reflect on frictions in corporate encounters, and more importantly that attention to frictions is in fact a gateway to gain new insights about the field. In our research project about Norwegian energy companies and their corporate social responsibility work when ‘going global’, applying a multi-method made us question dominant assumptions within anthropology of what constitutes “access”. We discuss how multiple approaches to “access”, which takes into account the positionality of the researcher, fluidity of research fields along with attention to power dynamics can shape the sort of knowledge that is produced when studying energy companies

Arbeidsnotat nr 16: BP/Statoil-alliansen : Et samarbeid til besvær

Denne rapporten er skrevet i tilknytning til Norges Forskninsråds Petropol-program. Rapporten er på mange måte en videreføring av min doktorgrad om internasjonalisering av norsk oljevirksomhet. Rapporten er ment å være historisk analyse av BP/Statoil-alliansen. Selv om mitt utgangspunkt har vært tradisjonell historisk metode har jeg forholdt meg til en del av den omfattende særlitteraturen om strategiske allianser. Undervis fikk jeg rede på at Lin Lerpold arbeidet med en doktorgrad ved Handelshøgskolan i Stockholm om det samme tema. Etter en henvendelse innledet vi et samarbeid, et samarbeid som vel i all hovedsak har vært til min fordel. Jeg har både fått tilgang til Lerpolds historiske materiale og enkelte av hennes intervjuer. Vi har også gjennomført flere intervjuer i fellesskap. Når slikt samarbeid har vært mulig uten at jeg har tråkket for kraftig i hennes bed er det fordi vårt utgangspunkt har vært forskjellig. Jeg har vært ute etter å skrive en tradisjonell historisk analyse. Lerpold befinner seg midt i fagfeltet strategiske allianser og bruker BP/Statoil-alliansen som case i for å underbygge spesielle teoretiske poeng

Pre Press Gothic Infections

This article proposes, a reading of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818) as a case study for discussing infectious literature, storytelling as therapy and the interconnectedness of Gothic methodologies and medical humanities. Northanger Abbey was written in a period when women’s reading habits was a contested topic, so I will provide a quick historical overview of the period and the problematic Gothic novel, which Northanger Abbey satirizes. Where previous research has focused on Catherine Morland, the protagonist and ‘misreader’ in this Gothic satire, this article will focus on Austen’s feminized hero, Henry Tilney, and read him in the role of a mesmeric healer. His goal is to cure Catherine of her obsession with Gothic novels, in order for her to fulfil the feminine ideal of the time. The mesmeric method is to produce a crisis in the patient, however, I will show how Henry’s plan fails and he inadvertently produces a crisis in himself, and forces him to realize the extent of his own ‘reading illness’. He is ‘infected’ by the masculine literary canon, which in his mind entails literary superiority over Catherine and his sister Eleanor.&#x0D; Storytelling as therapy is a term that connects literature and trauma into a method of organizing experience. My analysis will focus on a selection of dialogue between the main characters and Henry’s monologues, to highlight where Austen’s hero is compelled to take narrative control as a way to control his own trauma; his troubled relationship with his father and the death of his mother.</jats:p

Arbeidsnotat nr 26: Fra forvitring til ny giv : Om en storulykke som aldri inntraff?

På julaften, 24. desember 2000, ble en oljearbeider drept i en kranulykke på Oseberg-feltet i Nordsjøen.1 Det var Norsk Hydro som var operatør på feltet. Ulykken fikk stor offentlig oppmerksomhet. Norsk Hydro hadde som de fleste oljeselskapene i Nordsjøen insistert på at oljeindustrien nå behersket sikkerhetsutfordringene som lå i å produsere olje under ekstreme naturforhold på norsk kontinentalsokkel. Kort tid etter ulykken kapitulerte oljeindustrien fra en posisjon preget av ekstrem selvsikkerhet – ja til dels selvgodhet – til å akseptere at risikonivået i oljevirksomheten var i ferd med å øke. Dette åpnet opp for en revitalisering av sikkerhetssystemet offshore

Gothic Infections

This article proposes, a reading of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818) as a case study for discussing infectious literature, storytelling as therapy and the interconnectedness of Gothic methodologies and medical humanities. Northanger Abbey was written in a period when women’s reading habits was a contested topic, so I will provide a quick historical overview of the period and the problematic Gothic novel, which Northanger Abbey satirizes. Where previous research has focused on Catherine Morland, the protagonist and ‘misreader’ in this Gothic satire, this article will focus on Austen’s feminized hero, Henry Tilney, and read him in the role of a mesmeric healer. His goal is to cure Catherine of her obsession with Gothic novels, in order for her to fulfil the feminine ideal of the time. The mesmeric method is to produce a crisis in the patient, however, I will show how Henry’s plan fails and he inadvertently produces a crisis in himself, and forces him to realize the extent of his own ‘reading illness’. He is ‘infected’ by the masculine literary canon, which in his mind entails literary superiority over Catherine and his sister Eleanor.&#x0D; Storytelling as therapy is a term that connects literature and trauma into a method of organizing experience. My analysis will focus on a selection of dialogue between the main characters and Henry’s monologues, to highlight where Austen’s hero is compelled to take narrative control as a way to control his own trauma; his troubled relationship with his father and the death of his mother.</jats:p

Illness and the Scandinavian Gothic: Unnatural Illness Narratives in Scandinavian Fiction

Denne avhandlingen analyserer tre samtidsromaner, Mats Strandbergs "Hemmet", Ragnar Hovlands "Ei vinterreise" og Olga Ravns "Celestine". Romanene behandler ulike sykdomsmotiv, og undersøkelsen viste at selv om romanene varierer i sjanger, språk, og eksperimentell narrasjon, er ulike sykdommer fremstilt gjennom samme troper og motiv, mer bestemt besettelse, forfølgelse, og hjemsøkelse. Jeg har lest disse tekstene i lys av gotiske konvensjoner som presentert av Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick og Mathias Fyhr, og jeg argumenterer for at disse tekstene hører til kategorien nordisk gotikk. Videre utforsker avhandlingen hvordan sykdommen i tekstene skaper en narrativ splittelse, i form av dobbeltgjengere, umulige fortellere, og ontologiske brister i mer eller mindre mimetiske verdensfremstillinger. Jeg argumenterer for at denne litterære strategien åpner for et bredere, rikere språk som kan omfavne og formidle mørkere aspekter av sykdomsopplevelsen. Samtidig skapes en bevisstgjøring av metaforiske diskurser rundt sykdom, og avhandlingen går i dialog med metaforer som forbinder sykdom med unaturlige og monstrøse fenomener. Jeg belyser disse fasettene gjennom teoretiske perspektiver fra internasjonal- og nordisk gotikkforskning, skrekkens fenomenologi, og unnaturlig narratologi, som metodisk inngang til tekstene. Avhandlinger konkluderer med at gotikken og unnaturlig narratologi fremhever aspekter ved sykdom ved å la teksten dvele i det ukomfortable og det uhyggelige for å humanisere og gi talerør til stemmer som sykdom har fortiet.This dissertation analyses three contemporary novels, Mats Strandberg's "Hemmet", Ragnar Hovland's "Ei vinterreise" and Olga Ravn's "Celestine". The novels thematise illness, and the analysis showed that although the novels vary in genre, language and experimental narration, different illnesses are portrayed through the same tropes and motifs, more specifically obsession, persecution and haunting. I have read these texts in light of Gothic conventions as presented by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Mathias Fyhr, and I argue that these texts belong to the category of Scandinavian Gothic. Furthermore, the dissertation explores how disease in the texts creates a narrative split, in the form of doubles, impossible narrators, and ontological gaps in more or less mimetic representations of the world. I argue that this literary strategy allows for a broader, richer language that can embrace and convey darker aspects of the illness experience. At the same time, an awareness of metaphorical discourses surrounding illness is established, and the dissertation engages in dialogue with metaphors that connect illness with unnatural and monstrous phenomena. I illuminate these facets through theoretical perspectives from international and Scandinavian Gothic research, the phenomenology of horror, and unnatural narratology, as a methodological introduction to the texts. I conclude that the Gothic and unnatural narratology highlight darker aspects of illness by allowing the text to dwell on the uncomfortable and the uncanny in order to humanise and give voice to voices silenced by illness