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This book presents the first English introduction to the broad history of the Gothic mode in Spain. It focuses on key literary periods, such as Romanticism, the fin-de-siècle, spiritualist writings of the early-twentieth century, and the cinematic and literary booms of the 1970s and 2000s. With illustrative case studies, Aldana Reyes demonstrates how the Gothic mode has been a permanent yet ever-shifting fixture of the literary and cinematic landscape of Spain since the late-eighteenth century. He proposes that writers and filmmakers alike welcomed the Gothic as a liberating and transgressive artistic language.
List of contents
1. INTRODUCTION: DEFINING AND DELIMITING THE SPANISH GOTHIC.- 2. PART I - FIRST WAVE GOTHIC (1785-1834) - Chapter 1. Imported Terrors and First Genre Hybrids.- 3. Chapter 2. The Early Spanish Gothic Novel (1800-34).- 4. PART II - FROM ROMANTICISM TO THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE (1834-1900) - Chapter 3. Spanish Romanticism and the Gothic.- 5. Chapter 4. From the 1860s to the Fin-de-Siècle: The Development of the Gothic Short Story.- 6. PART III - MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY GOTHIC LITERATURE (1900-2016) - Chapter 5. The Twentieth Century (1900-75): Modernist Spiritualism and Political Gothic.- 7. Chapter 6. From the Death of Franco to the Present: The Establishment of Horror and the Gothic Auteur.- 8. PART IV - SPANISH GOTHIC CINEMA (1906-2016) - Chapter 7. From Segundo de Chomón to the Rise and Fall of 'Fantaterror'.- 9. Chapter 8. The Post-Millennial Horror Revival: Auteurs, Gothic (Dis)Continuities and National History.- 10. Conclusion: A Language of Collaboration and Liberation.
About the author
Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, and a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. His books include Horror: A Literary History (editor; 2016), Horror Film and Affect (2016), Digital Horror (co-editor; 2015) and Body Gothic (2014).
Summary
This book presents the first English introduction to the broad history of the Gothic mode in Spain. It focuses on key literary periods, such as Romanticism, the fin-de-siècle, spiritualist writings of the early-twentieth century, and the cinematic and literary booms of the 1970s and 2000s. With illustrative case studies, Aldana Reyes demonstrates how the Gothic mode has been a permanent yet ever-shifting fixture of the literary and cinematic landscape of Spain since the late-eighteenth century. He proposes that writers and filmmakers alike welcomed the Gothic as a liberating and transgressive artistic language.
Additional text
“Spanish Gothic is a valuable and revealing introduction to an exotic locale whose sun-drenched vistas would make it an unlikely place for gothic gloom, and yet Aldana Reyes shows how and why it has prospered even there.” (Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue, Vol.178, September-October, 2017)
“The book provides a compelling account of how the gothic was able to pervade (or infect) a variety of genres and modes in Spain during this period. He characterises the gothic as transhistorical, transmedial and transgeneric, materialising in romantic literature, didactic fiction … and cinema. … in giving us the most complete account to date (in English, at least) of this mode in Spain,
Spanish Gothic also illustrates the transnational nature of the Gothic as it travelled beyond its original ‘homes’.” (Dr. Leon Hunt, Viewfinder Online, bufvc.ac. uk, June, 2017)
“Spanish Gothic is an exemplary piece of scholarship that will assuredly become the cornerstone of future studies of gothic cultural production in Spain. It will, moreover, undoubtedly contribute to new transnational histories of gothic as it developed on a global scale from the eighteenth century to today.” (Christina Morin, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Vol. 16, 2017)
Report
"Spanish Gothic is a valuable and revealing introduction to an exotic locale whose sun-drenched vistas would make it an unlikely place for gothic gloom, and yet Aldana Reyes shows how and why it has prospered even there." (Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue, Vol.178, September-October, 2017)
"The book provides a compelling account of how the gothic was able to pervade (or infect) a variety of genres and modes in Spain during this period. He characterises the gothic as transhistorical, transmedial and transgeneric, materialising in romantic literature, didactic fiction ... and cinema. ... in giving us the most complete account to date (in English, at least) of this mode in Spain, Spanish Gothic also illustrates the transnational nature of the Gothic as it travelled beyond its original 'homes'." (Dr. Leon Hunt, Viewfinder Online, bufvc.ac. uk, June, 2017)"Spanish Gothic is an exemplary piece of scholarship that will assuredly become the cornerstone of future studies of gothic cultural production in Spain. It will, moreover, undoubtedly contribute to new transnational histories of gothic as it developed on a global scale from the eighteenth century to today." (Christina Morin, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Vol. 16, 2017)
