Gothic Mētis: Cunning Monstrosity, Shapeshifting and Subversion linking the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Gothic Literary Studies

by Natasha Rebry Coulthard

Exhuming and reanimating an obscure ancient cunning associated with the monstrous, the hybrid, the feminine and the nonhuman, this study proposes a novel transdisciplinary framework for analysing Gothic media and discourse through the lens of mētis. Mētis denotes a wily, adaptive intelligence shared by tricksters, humans, nonhumans and objects, characterised by shapeshifting, twists and duplicity – it is also an artful praxis for blurring categories, embracing multiplicity, navigating difference and subverting authority. Using mētis as both theme and method, Gothic Mētis weaves together myth, literature, rhetorical theory and critical posthumanism, to analyse Gothic character and narration from the nineteenth century to the present while developing a post-anthropocentric praxis for representing, navigating and ultimately subverting the Anthropocene. Reading Gothic alongside and through mētis—and mētis alongside and through Gothic—this book highlights the Gothic mode as a timely, artful response to the rise of the Anthropocene, rendering a post-anthropocentric world beyond Man. 

366 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2025