Eeva Savolainen

Following Covid-19, diagnostic anxieties have dominated public discourse. These anxieties have a long and understudied cultural history. In the Victorian period, Gothic literature was central for the construction and circulation of fantasies and fears about diagnosis in Britain, and a new understanding of its role in the history of diagnostic anxieties is urgently needed. This PhD examines the development of Gothic diagnostics. Through comparing nineteenth-century Gothic fiction and medical publications, it will map out the medico-cultural shifts that led to the gothicisation of diagnostic methods and technologies, and examine the methods, stylistics and ethical debates at the heart of Gothic diagnostics.