Gothic Novels Of The Twentieth Century

Easy to use, competently indexed, and fun to explore, this bibliography is an irresistible antidote for all forms of gothic snobbery. Recommended for gothophiliacs, gothophobiacs, and readers with idle nights and empty weekends.

Providing an indispensable resource for academics as well as readers interested in the evolution of horror fiction in the 20th century, this book provides a readable yet critical guide to global horror fiction and authors. Horror Fiction in the 20th Century encompasses the world of 20th-century horror literature and explores it in a critical but balanced fashion. Readers will be exposed to the world of horror literature, a truly global phenomenon during the 20th century. Beginning with the modern genre's roots in the 19th century, the book proceeds to cover 20th-century horror literature in all of its manifestations, whether in comics, pulps, paperbacks, hardcover novels, or mainstream magazines, and from every country that produced it. The major horror authors of the century receive their due, but the works of many authors who are less well-known or who have been forgotten are also described and analyzed. In addition to providing critical assessments and judgments of individual authors and works, the book describes the evolution of the genre and the major movements within it. Horror Fiction in the 20th Century stands out from its competitors and will be of interest to its readers because of its informed critical analysis, its unprecedented coverage of female authors and writers of color, and its concise historical overview.

The most extensive and up-to-date volume of essays on the Gothic mode in twentieth century culture. During the latter half of the twentieth century the Gothic emerged as one of the liveliest and most significant areas of academic inquiry within literary, film, and popular culture studies. This volume covers the key concepts and developments associated with Twentieth-Century Gothic, tracing the development of the mode from the fin de siècle to 9/11. The eighteen chapters reflect the interdisciplinary and ever-evolving nature of the Gothic, which, during the century, migrated from literature and drama to the cinema and television. The volume has both a chronological and thematic focus and particular attention is paid to topics and themes related to race, identity, marginality and technology. Chapters on ecogothic, Gothic Studies as a discipline, Medical Humanities, Queer Studies, African American Studies and Russian Gothic ensure that the collection is up-to-date and wide-ranging. Suggested further readings at the end of each chapter are intended to facilitate further independent research by readers and researchers. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American Studies, and a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her recent books include Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer (2017) and Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (2019). Bernice M. Murphy is an Associate Professor and Lecturer in Popular Literature at the School of English, Trinity College, Dublin. She has published extensively on topics related to Gothic and horror fiction and film. Her latest monograph is entitled The California Gothic in Fiction and Film.

Co-published with Institute of Contemporary Art, Exhibition catalog.

Selected by a poll of more than 180 Gothic specialists (creative writers, professors, critics, and Gothic Studies program developers at universities), the fifty-three original works discussed in 21st-Century Gothic represent the most impressive Gothic novels written around the world between 2000-2010. The essays in this volume discuss the merits of these novels, highlighting the influences and key components that make them worthy of inclusion. Many of the pioneer voices of Gothic Studies, as well as other key critics of the field, have all contributed new essays to this volume, including David Punter, Jerrold Hogle, Karen F. Stein, Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Tony Magistrale, Don D'Ammassa, Mavis Haut, Walter Rankin, James Doig, Laurence A. Rickels, Douglass H. Thomson, Sue Zlosnik, Carol Margaret Davision, Ruth Bienstock Anolik, Glennis Byron, Judith Wilt, Bernice Murphy, Darrell Schweitzer, and June Pulliam. The guide includes a preface by one of the world's leading authorities on the weird and fantastic, S. T. Joshi. Sharing their knowledge of how traditional Gothic elements and tensions surface in a changed way within a contemporary novel, the contributors enhance the reader's dark enjoyment, emotional involvement, and appreciation of these works. These essays show not only how each of these novels are Gothic but also how they advance or change Gothicism, making the works both irresistible for readers and establishing their place in the Gothic canon.

Why, at a time when the majority of us no longer believe in ghosts, demons, or the occult, does Gothic continue to have such a strong grasp upon literature, cinema and popular culture? This book answers this question through exploring some of the ways in which we have applied Gothic tropes to our everyday fears. The book opens with The Turn of the Screw, a text dealing in the dangers adults pose to children while simultaneously questioning the assumed innocence of all children. As our culture becomes increasingly anxious about child safety the uncanny surfaces in the popular imagination in the form of the paedophile or the child murderer. At the same time, the Gothic has always brought danger home, and another key focus of the book lies in the various manifestations undertaken by the haunted house during the twentieth century, from the bombed-out spaces of the blitz (‘The Demon Lover’ and The Night Watch) to the designer bathrooms of wealthy American suburbia (What Lies Beneath). Gothic monsters can also be terror monsters, and after a discussion of terrorism and atrocity in relation to burial alive the book examines the relationship between the human and the inhuman through the role of the beast monster as manifestation of the evil that resides in our midst (The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Birds). It is with the dangers of the body that the Gothic has been most closely associated and, during the later twentieth century, paranoia attaches itself to skeletal forms and ghosts in the wake of the HIV/AIDs crisis. Sexuality and/as disease is one of the themes of Patrick McGrath’s work (Dr Haggard’s Disease and ‘The Angel’) and the issue of skeletons in the closet is also explored through Henry James’s ‘The Jolly Corner’. However, sexuality is also one of the most liberating aspects of Gothic narratives. After a brief discussion of camp humour in the British television drama series Jekyll, the book concludes with a discussion of the apparitional lesbian through the work of Sarah Waters.

Taking its starting point and title from the Gothic novel, this book investigates the revival of a Gothic sensibility in contemporary art: in American and British fiction labelled the "New Gothic"; in film with its long tradition of horror; and in video, music, fashion, design, and underground culture. Gothic accompanies an exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, of 23 artists. Some employ a detached and reductive formal language to transmute images of excessive and gruesome violence. The old Gothic themes of the fantastic and pathological are infused with potency as they address concerns about the body, disease, voyeurism, and power.