However, Poore argues that there is a series of tensions between the lip-service paid to the condemnation of Victorian freak shows and the increasingly diverse uses, from comedy sketches to comic books, to which Merrick’s image and story are put. Since the early 1980s, Merrick’s story in its various iterations has become a popular way to view nineteenth-century mores and to speculate on how far ‘we’ have come. The film, originally adapted in part from the surgeon Frederick Treves’s The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923) was subsequently adapted back into a film novelization by Christine Sparks. After outlining the way that a neo-Victorian stage culture has been developed Poore argues that Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man (1977) and David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man can be regarded as twin foundational texts in the modern-day repurposing of the story of Joseph Merrick. In this chapter Benjamin Poore takes the example of ‘The Elephant Man’ as a test case for how Victorian narratives have been developed in a neo-Victorian theatrical context. 11 True histories of the Elephant Man: storytelling and theatricality in adaptations of the life of Joseph Merrick.
4 Reading the Gothic and Gothic readers.3 Locke in pentameters: Victorian poetry after (or before) posthumousness.In the following three papers, the evidence which supports this diagnosis is reviewed, together with a consideration of the disease affecting his left hip and the manner of his death. Features of these considered separately suggest neurofibromatosis as a diagnosis, but because the presentation is more extreme than seen in any other recorded patient, other diagnoses have been entertained. Both bony abnormalities and substantial soft tissue masses contributed to his deformity. However, contemporary accounts of his condition survive. Books, a play and a film have featured his unique story, but each presented it with varying degrees of artistic license. After an unhappy continental tour, he was given asylum in The London Hospital at the instigation of Mr Frederick Treves, and stayed there until he died. film text 3 darkethe elephant man from a disabled perspective.pdf. Joseph's own swellings began to appear in early childhood and he rapidly became so grotesque, that he eventually sought a living as a freak. Munjack English, Period 8 4 November 2016 The Elephant Man The script for Bernard. His mother and younger sister were cripples, but their disease is unknown. Joseph Merrick was one of three children.