Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters

Graham, Peter W., and Oehlschlaeger, Fritz H.

ISBN 10: 080184357X / ISBN 13: 9780801843570

Editore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1992

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Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. vii, [3], 212, [2] p. Notes. Select Bibliography. Index. From Wikipedia: "Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 11 April 1890), sometimes incorrectly referred to as John Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities who was exhibited as a human curiosity named the Elephant Man. He became well known in London society after he went to live at the London Hospital. Merrick was born in Leicester, Leicestershire and began to develop abnormally during the first few years of his life. His skin appeared thick and lumpy, he developed an enlargement of his lips, and a bony lump grew on his forehead. One of his arms and both feet became enlarged and at some point during his childhood he fell and damaged his hip, resulting in permanent lameness. When he was 10, his mother died and his father soon remarried. Merrick left school at 13, and had difficulty finding employment. Rejected by his father and stepmother, he left home. In late 1879, aged 17, Merrick entered the Leicester Union Workhouse. In 1884, after four years in the workhouse, Merrick contacted a showman named Sam Torr and proposed that Torr should exhibit him. Torr agreed, and arranged for a group of men to manage Merrick, whom they named the Elephant Man. After touring the East Midlands, Merrick travelled to London to be exhibited in a penny gaff shop on Whitechapel Road which was rented by showman Tom Norman. Norman's shop, directly across the street from the London Hospital, was visited by a surgeon named Frederick Treves, who invited Merrick to be examined and photographed. Soon after Merrick's visits to the hospital, Tom Norman's shop was closed by the police and Merrick's managers sent him to tour in Europe. In Belgium, Merrick was robbed by his road manager and abandoned in Brussels. He eventually made his way back to London; unable to communicate, he was found by the police to have Frederick Treves' card on him. Treves came and took Merrick back to the London Hospital. Although his condition was incurable, Merrick was allowed to stay at the hospital for the remainder of his life. Treves visited him daily and the pair developed quite a close friendship. Merrick also received visits from the wealthy ladies and gentlemen of London society, including Alexandra, Princess of Wales. Merrick died on 11 April 1890, aged 27. The official cause of death was asphyxia, although Treves, who dissected the body, said that Merrick had died of a dislocated neck. He believed that Merrick who had to sleep sitting up because of the weight of his head had been attempting to sleep lying down, to "be like other people". The exact cause of Merrick's deformities is unclear. The dominant theory throughout much of the 20th century was that Merrick suffered from neurofibromatosis type I. In 1986, a new theory emerged that he had Proteus syndrome. In 2001 it was proposed that Merrick had suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis type I and Proteus syndrome. DNA tests conducted on his hair and bones have proven inconclusive. In 1979, Bernard Pomerance's play about Merrick called The Elephant Man debuted, and David Lynch's film, also called The Elephant Man, was released the following year." From Wikipedia: "Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet, GCVO, CH, CB (15 February 1853 7 December 1923) was a prominent British surgeon of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, now known for his friendship with Joseph Merrick, "the Elephant Man". Frederick Treves was born 15 February 1853 in Dorchester, Dorset, the son of William Treves, an upholsterer, and his wife Jane (née Knight). As a small boy, he attended the school run by the Dorset dialect poet, William Barnes, and also the Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and London Hospital Medical School. He was a Knight of Grace of the Order of St John. He married Ann Elizabeth Mason in 1877. Treves became a surgeon, specialising in abdominal surgery, at the London Hospital in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He per.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters
• Editore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD
• Data di pubblicazione: 1992
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 080184357X
• ISBN 13: 9780801843570
• Rilegatura: Hardcover
• Edizione: Presumed first edition/first printing.
• Condizione: Very good
• Condizione della sovraccoperta: very good

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

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.

Recensione

"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