History Of The Gothic Twentieth Century Gothic

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.

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 the question by 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 whilst simultaneously questioning the assumed innocence of all children. Staying with the domestic arena, it explores 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). The monsters that emerge through the uncanny surfaces of the Gothic 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 British television drama series Jekyll, the book concludes with a discussion of the apparitional lesbian through the work of Sarah Waters.

The essays in this volume reinterpret and contest the Gothic cultural inheritance, each from a specifically twenty-first century perspective. Most are based on papers delivered at a conference held, appropriately, in Horace Walpoleʼs Gothic mansion at Strawberry Hill in West London, which is usually seen as the geographical origin of the first, but not the last, of the many Gothic revivals of the past 300 years. In a contemporary context, the Gothic sensibility could be seen as a mode particularly applicable to the frightening instability of the world in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The truth is probably less epochal: that Gothic never went away (when were we ever without fear?), or at least has persisted since its resurgence in the late nineteenth century. Gothic is at least as modern as it is ancient, and each essay in this collection contributes to current scholarship on the Gothic by exploring a particular aspect of Gothic’s contemporaneity. The volume contains papers on horror novels and cinema, poetry, popular music and fan cultures.

"Written with an undergraduate audience in mind, this text offers a synthesis of the main topics of Gothic interest and clearly argued summaries of critical debate. It signals its difference from recent psychoanalytic readings of Gothic and argues instead for a more complex, multilayered approach via an historicist reading of gothic fiction. Illustrated with ten black and white plates and including an up-to-date bibliography, this will be an ideal text for all those with an interest in the Gothic."--BOOK JACKET.

The first volume to provide an interdisciplinary, comprehensive history of twentieth and twenty-first century Gothic culture.

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

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.

The Gothic Literature and History of New England surveys the history, nature and future of the Gothic mode in the region, from the witch trials through the Black Lives Matter Movement. Texts include Cotton Mather and other Puritan divines who collected folklore of the supernatural; the Frontier Gothic of Indian captivity narratives; the canonical authors of the American Renaissance such as Melville and Hawthorne; the women's ghost story tradition and the Domestic Gothic from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Shirley Jackson; H. P. Lovecraft; Stephen King; and writers of the current generation who respond to racial and gender issues. The work brings to the surface the religious intolerance, racism and misogyny inherent in the New England Gothic, and how these nightmares continue to haunt literature and popular culture—films, television and more.