“Light of Life”: Gender, Place, and Knowledge in H.G. “The Hours of the Day and the Night Are Ours Equally”: Dracula and the Lighting Technologies of Victorian London 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.Ĭity Nights, City Lights in London Literature of the 1890s The volume examines the interconnection of night, darkness and nocturnal illumination across a broad range of literary texts. The night gains significance as an alternative space, as an ‘other of the day’, only when it is at least partially illuminated. 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. 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. 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.Ī closer inspection, however, reveals that things are not quite so clear cut and that light and darkness cannot be understood as simple binary opposites. Light and darkness shape our perception of the world.
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