Abstract
Guy Boothby’s Pharos the Egyptian, published in 1889, employs the category of the Gothic to discuss various anxieties plaguing the late Victorian society. It deals with issues such as the Gothic Other’s ‘magical’ capabilities, revenge, disease, and the colonial extraction of wealth, among others. The novel overwhelms the binary between the rational European self and the Gothic colonial other by presenting the Egyptian Pharos not as an opposite but as an excess of the European self. Pharos is as rational as he is Gothic and in this excess of being both, he destabilizes the hierarchy and binary at once. We argue that the Gothic Other is terrifying not just in its ‘Otherness’ but also in its similarity. The familiarity it exhibits with the European worldview is a major cause for concern for the European self, leading to a deeply disturbing sense of anxiety.
Recommended Citation
Jain, Shruti and Tekur Venkata, Kaushik
(2021)
"Pharos the Egyptian and the Gothic Other as Excess,"
Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies: Vol. 1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://repository.lsu.edu/tete_a_tete/vol1/iss1/1
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons, Modern Languages Commons