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The Gothic
From Horace Walpole to Angela Carter and the X-Files, new and familiar texts are reassessed, and common readings of Gothic themes and critical approaches to the genre are interrogated.
The popularity of Gothic fictions, themes and films suggests that the genre is the norm as much as the dark underside of contemporary cultural production. Having endured for over two hundred years and settled onto numerous respectable courses of study, the meaning and value of the Gothic seems due for reappraisal. The essays in this volume, written by critics whose work over the last twenty years has considerably advanced the understanding of the Gothic genre, reexamine its literary, historical and cultural significance: from Horace Walpole to Angela Carter and the X-Files, new and familiar texts are reassessed; common readings of Gothic themes and critical approaches to the genreare interrogated: Gothic finds itself integrally involved in the production of a modern sense of the nation; it continues to haunt legal discourses; it underpins social mythologies and ideologies; informs histories of sexuality and identity; offers curious substance to notions of community and culture, and raises questions of ethics and postmodernism.
Professor FRED BOTTING teaches in the Department of English at Keele University.
Contributors: DAVID PUNTER, ELISABETH BRONFEN, E.J. CLERY, ROBERT MILES, JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE, LESLIE J. MORAN, HELEN STODDART, FRED BOTTING, JERROLD E. HOGLE.
The popularity of Gothic fictions, themes and films suggests that the genre is the norm as much as the dark underside of contemporary cultural production. Having endured for over two hundred years and settled onto numerous respectable courses of study, the meaning and value of the Gothic seems due for reappraisal. The essays in this volume, written by critics whose work over the last twenty years has considerably advanced the understanding of the Gothic genre, reexamine its literary, historical and cultural significance: from Horace Walpole to Angela Carter and the X-Files, new and familiar texts are reassessed; common readings of Gothic themes and critical approaches to the genreare interrogated: Gothic finds itself integrally involved in the production of a modern sense of the nation; it continues to haunt legal discourses; it underpins social mythologies and ideologies; informs histories of sexuality and identity; offers curious substance to notions of community and culture, and raises questions of ethics and postmodernism.
Professor FRED BOTTING teaches in the Department of English at Keele University.
Contributors: DAVID PUNTER, ELISABETH BRONFEN, E.J. CLERY, ROBERT MILES, JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE, LESLIE J. MORAN, HELEN STODDART, FRED BOTTING, JERROLD E. HOGLE.
190 pages, Hardcover
First published November 22, 2001
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September 17, 2024
Don't do what I did and make a mistake here. I thought this was GOTHIC by Fred Botting, a comprehensive analysis of the history of the gothic genre of literature, but in fact it's THE GOTHIC, edited by the same author, a kind of sequel collection of essays to the above. A variety of authors explore variants of the gothic through different texts, ranging from an Angela Carter novel to THE X-FILES; there's a strong psychoanalytic angle to many of the essays, and a couple of them went completely over my head. I did enjoy the first essay and the last two, but this wasn't the genre overview that I was looking for.
Displaying 1 of 1 review