The Spell of Darkness - The Rise and Evolution of the English Gothic Novel

Oscar Wilde writes in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" that Art, like Nature, has its own monsters, "things of bestial shape and with hideous voices". Allegedly prompted by dreams, the Gothic novels are made of "the stuff of dreams" and are such monsters of art with their discontinuous, fragmented narrative structure. The Gothic writers' own hysteria testifies to the dismay they themselves experience, and also to the Gothic's subterranean nostalgia for order and homogeneity. All aspects of otherness and abnormality are fearfully explored by the Gothic novels that customarily incorporate them into a discourse of differences. Caught in between the legitimate urge to demonstrate that Gothic novels deserve critical notice and the awareness of the danger that lurks in the postmodern logic of denial, i. e. of overestimating and aestheticising a selection of texts that belong to a (fatally) marginal genre, the present book turns into a Gothic text itself: both radical and reactionary.

About the author

Lumini¿a Elena Turcu is Professor of English literatures at ¿tefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Romania. She authored books and articles on various literary ages and genres, such as the Realist Victorian novel, Modernist and Postmodernist fiction, but especially on the Gothic.

Product details

• Authors: Lumini a Elena Turcu, Lumini?a Elena Turcu, Lumini¿a Elena Turcu, Luminita Elena Turcu
• Publisher: Éditions universitaires européennes
• Languages: English, German
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 10.04.2017
• EAN: 9783639730906
• ISBN: 978-3-639-73090-6
• No. of pages: 292
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 220 mm x 17 mm
• Weight: 405 g
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies