All else confusion: A Study of the Textual Violence on Alan Moore’s From Hell

Abstract

[Abstract] Contrary to what is stated in the initial dedication in Alan Moore’s From Hell(1989), the book is actually far from being an account of the plight of the five women who fell to The Ripper’s knife in 1888. Instead, its fiction could be said to have been laid out in the shape of a textual edifice, built to honour the memory of its genre’s namesake: Jack. The aim of this essay is to map out the nocturnal abode where the book textual foundations can be found. The different sources of criticism used in the analysis ofFrom Hellreveal how various layers of textual violence are inflicted on the victims. This violence is instrumental in rendering their bodies a palimpsest in which the genre can perform its work of textual recreation. In the end, the sway of the genre’s meaning creation process seems to answer in the negative the question lyingat the centre of this essay:is it possible to tell an anti-misogynistic story using a misogynistic genre?