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This book is about the ways that Gothic literature has been transformed since the 18th century across cultures and across genres. In a series of essays written by scholars in the field, the book focuses on landscape in the Gothic and the ways landscape both reflects and reveals the dark elements of culture and humanity. It goes beyond traditional approaches to the Gothic by pushing the limits of the definition of the genre. From landscape painting to movies and video games, from memoir to fiction, and from works of different cultural origins and perspectives, this volume traverses the geography of the Gothic revealing the anxieties that still haunt humanity into the twenty-first century.
List of contents
Introduction. Haunted Landscapes and Fearful Spaces: Expanding Views on the Geography of the Gothic; Sharon Rose Yang and Kathleen Healey.- PART I: CROSS-GENRE: HIDEOUS HYBRIDS/HYBRIDS OF HORROR.- 1. Dark Shadows in the Promised Land: Landscapes of Terror and the Visual Arts in Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly; Kathleen Healey.- 2.Haunting Landscapes in "Female Gothic" Thriller Films: From Alfred Hitchcock to Orson Welles; Sheri Chinen Biesen.- 3. "Beauty Sleeping in the Lap of Horror": Landscape Aesthetics and Gothic Pleasures, from The Castle of Otranto to Video Games; Alice Davenport.- PART II: DARKNESS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES: NOT YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S HAUNTED CASTLE.- 4. What the Green Grass Hides: Denial and Deception in Suburban Detroit; Amber Vayo.- 5. "Go steady, Undine!": The Horror of Ambition in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country; Myrto Drizou.- 6. The Convent as Coven: Gothic Implications of Women-Centered Illness and Healing Narratives in Toni Morrison's Paradise; Belinda M. Waller-Peterson.- 7. Haunting Memories: Gothic and Memoir; Erica Moore.- PART III: GOTHIC SOCIAL LANDSCAPES.- 8. The Indian Gothic; Nalini Pai.- 9. St. Bernard's: Terrors of the Light in the Gothic Hospital; Christy Rieger.- 10. Nature Selects the Horla: How the Concept of Natural Selection Influences Guy de Maupassant's Horror Tale; Sharon Rose Yang.- 11. Ruins of Empire: Refashioning the Gothic in J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun (1984); Alex Watson.- 12. Gothic Landscapes in Mary Butts's Ashe of Rings; Roslyn Reso Foy.- Index.-
About the author
Sharon Rose Yang is Professor of English at Worcester State University, USA. She both teaches and writes on the Gothic and nineteenth-century literature. She has published in nineteenth-century literature and is the author of Goddesses, Mages, and Wise Women: The Female Pastoral Guide in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth—Century English Drama.
Kathleen Healey is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Worcester State University, USA. Her research includes literature and the visual arts, Gothic Literature, and American Literature.
Summary
This book is about the ways that Gothic literature has been transformed since the 18th century across cultures and across genres. In a series of essays written by scholars in the field, the book focuses on landscape in the Gothic and the ways landscape both reflects and reveals the dark elements of culture and humanity. It goes beyond traditional approaches to the Gothic by pushing the limits of the definition of the genre. From landscape painting to movies and video games, from memoir to fiction, and from works of different cultural origins and perspectives, this volume traverses the geography of the Gothic revealing the anxieties that still haunt humanity into the twenty-first century.
