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An exploration of Gothic literature from its origins in Horace Walpole's 1764 classic
The Castle of Otranto, through Romantic and Victorian Gothic to modernist and postmodernist takes on the form. The volume surveys key debates such as Female Gothic, the Gothic narrator and nation and empire, and focuses on a wide range of texts including
The Mysteries of Udolpho,
Frankenstein,
Jane Eyre,
Dracula,
The Magic Toyshop and
The Shining.
List of contents
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: A Cultural Overview
Part Three: Texts, Writers and Contexts
Eighteenth-century Gothic: Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis
Romantic-era Gothic: Coleridge, Byron and Mary Shelley
Nineteenth-century Gothic: Emily Bronte, Poe, Collins and Stevenson
From the Fin de Siecle to Modern Gothic: Stoker, Wells, M.R. James and Lovecraft
Twentieth-century American Gothic: Faulkner, King, Rice and Brite
British Gothic in the Late Twentieth Century: Carter, Ballard, Mantel and Waters
Part Four: Critical Theories and Debates
Narrative Instability and the Gothic Narrator
Female Gothic
Gothic Bodies
Nation and Empire
Part Five: References and Resources
Timeline
Further Reading
Index
About the author
Sue Chaplin is a Senior Lecturer in English, and Course Leader for the BA English and History at Leeds Metropolitan University. She is also Executive Officer to the International Gothic Association, Commissioning Editor of the Romanticism Division of the online journal Literature Compass and member of the editorial board for Gothic Studies. She is the author of two monographs – The Gothic and the Rule of Law, 1764-1820 (Palgrave, 2007) and Law, Sensibility and the Sublime in Eighteenth-century Women’s Fiction (Ashgate, 2004) – and editor of the forthcoming Romanticism Handbook (Continuum).
Summary
An exploration of Gothic literature from its origins in Horace Walpole’s 1764 classic The Castle of Otranto, through Romantic and Victorian Gothic to modernist and postmodernist takes on the form.
