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Synopsis: The surgeon Frederick Treves and the anthropologist Ashley Montagu helped make him famous. Filmmaker David Lynch and playwright Bernard Pomerance made him a star. According to the popular press, singer Michael Jackson wanted to buy his bones from London Hospital. Stories about Joseph Merrick--the "Elephant Man" of Victorian England--combine elements of myth and fable, tragedy and melodrama, freak show and farce. And they seem to have perennial appeal.
In Articulating the Elephant Man, Peter W. Graham and Fritz H. Oehlschlaeger examine how the phenomenon called "the Elephant Man" has been constructed and reconstructed--how Joseph Merrick has been transformed from a suffering individual into an exhibit, a shape-shifting curiosity whose different guises variously suit the needs of particular audiences, genres, and interpreters. Merrick's "presenters" have been a varied group of artists, medical experts, scholars, and biographers. But preceding them all is Merrick himself, no mere passive sufferer but an individual who bravely endured--and, when he had to, successfully exploited--his outrageous bodily disorder.
According to Graham and Oehlschlaeger, each account--starting with Merrick's autobiographical pamphlet--blends description and creation, observation and self-revelation, and the selective recording, alteration, and suppression of details. Telling the story of the Elephant Man, whether as a drama, a film, a sequence of poems, or a medical case study, often reveals as much about the observer as it does about the subject. The Victorians' accounts of Merrick, for example, reflect that era's tendency to normalize the extraordinary, to colonize the exotic. For them, Merrick was both an ideal object of charity and a challenge to their most basic assumptions about humanity. In our own time, Merrick is cast as the ultimate outsider. If it was culturally convenient for the Victorians to patronize Merrick and congratulate his "benefactors," contemporary cultural biases make it easier for us to admire him as a subversive hero and to debunk his "exploiters."
Like the hero of a folk tale, the real Merrick suffered indignities but enjoyed a dramatic change of fortune. At the end of his life, he had attained a measure of comfort, a small portion of fame, and the courteous notice of the eminent, the beautiful, even the royal. At the heart of his story, the authors suggest, is Merrick's humanity--and telling his story helps us define our own. Merrick faced what every human being who grows old or falls ill must endure, the sufferer's painful questions about cause and effect, about personal guilt or cosmic cruelty. He knew the isolation felt by every outsider--the poor, the homeless, the victimized, even the modern "superstar." And, like each of us, he must have wondered if appearance is, after all, a misleading mask.
Review:
"An attempt to explain why the life of Joseph Merrick... has proved so durably fascinating... Themes of loneliness, the disparity between outer appearance and inner reality, and the costs of celebrity swirl through the book." -- Washington Post Book World
Title: Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph ...
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: 1992
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: new
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. The binding is tight, corners sharp. Text unmarked. The dust jacket shows some light handling, unclipped, in a mylar cover. 8vo. 212pp. Seller Inventory # NOWgraAE
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Book Description Condition: Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 6073902-75
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society) This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. Seller Inventory # 7719-9780801843570
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. Seller Inventory # 6545-9780801843570