Haunted Empire shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity. Valeria Sobol argues that the persistent ...presence of Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire is a key literary form that enacts deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia's idiosyncratic imperial experience. Her book brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as she explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia's own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms "the imperial uncanny." Focusing on two spaces of the imperial uncanny—the Baltic north/Finland and the Ukrainian south— Haunted Empire reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.
EcoGothic Smith, Andrew; Hughes, William
2013
eBook
This book will provide the first study of how the Gothic engages with ecocritical ideas. The book's focus is from the late eighteenth century to the present day, via consideration of a number of ...national and global contexts and different media including short stories, novels and films.
Provides a new account of the emergence of Irish gothic fiction in mid-eighteenth century. This book provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of the ‘beginnings’ of Irish ...gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland. The main argument the book makes is that the Irish gothic should be read in the context of the split in Irish Anglican public opinion that opened in the 1750s, and seen as a fictional instrument of liberal Anglican opinion in a changing political landscape. By providing a fully historicized account of the beginnings of the genre in Ireland, the book also addresses the theoretical controversies that have bedevilled discussion of the Irish gothic in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The book gives ample space to the critical debate, and rigorously defends a reading of the Irish gothic as an Anglican, Patriot tradition. This reading demonstrates the connections between little-known Irish gothic fictions of the mid-eighteenth century (The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Longsword), and the Irish gothic tradition more generally, and also the gothic as a genre of global significance. Key Features * Examines gothic texts including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, (Anon), The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Thomas Leland's Longsword * Provides a rigorous and robust theory of the Irish Gothic * Reads early Irish gothic fully into the political context of mid-eighteenth century Ireland This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.
Gothic Things Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew
07/2023
eBook
Offering an innovative approach to the Gothic, Gothic
Things: Dark Enchantment and Anthropocene Anxiety breaks
ground with a new materialist analysis of the genre, highlighting
the ways that, since ...its origins in the eighteenth century, the
Gothic has been intensely focused on "ominous matter" and "thing
power." In chapters attending to gothic bodies, spaces, books, and
other objects, Gothic Things argues that the Gothic has
always been about what happens when objects assume mysterious
animacy or potency and when human beings are reduced to the status
of just one thing among many-more powerful-others. In exploring how
the Gothic insistently decenters the human, Jeffrey Andrew
Weinstock reveals human beings to be enmeshed in networks of human
and nonhuman forces mostly outside of their control. Gothic
Things thus resituates the Gothic as the uncanny doppelgänger
of twenty-first-century critical and cultural theory, lurking just
beneath the surface (and sometimes explicitly surfacing) as it
haunts considerations of how human beings interact with objects and
their environment. In these pages the Gothic offers a dark
reflection of the contemporary "nonhuman turn," expressing a
twenty-first-century structure of feeling undergirded by anxiety
over the fate of the human: spectrality, monstrosity, and
apocalypse. Substituting horror for hope, the Gothic, Weinstock
explains, has been a philosophical meditation on human relations
to the nonhuman since its inception, raising significant questions
about how we can counter anthropocentric thought in our quest to
live more harmoniously with the world around us.
The Gothic is more than just maidens-in-peril fleeing supernatural villains in another age. Historically, it was a form used to depict and critique the dangerous labour conditions faced by workers ...during the Industrial Revolution.
Surveying the widespread appropriations of the Gothic in contemporary literature and culture, Post-Millennial Gothic shows contemporary Gothic is often romantic, funny and celebratory. Reading a wide ...range of popular texts, from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series through Tim Burton's Gothic film adaptations of Sweeney Todd , Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows , to the appearance of Gothic in fashion, advertising and television, Catherine Spooner argues that conventional academic and media accounts of Gothic culture have overlooked this celebratory strain of 'Happy Gothic'.
Identifying a shift in subcultural sensibilities following media coverage of the Columbine shootings, Spooner suggests that changing perceptions of Goth subculture have shaped the development of 21st-century Gothic. Reading these contemporary trends back into their sources, Spooner also explores how they serve to highlight previously neglected strands of comedy and romance in earlier Gothic literature.
An essential quick-reference book for students of Gothic literature, theatre and literary theory Key Concepts in the Gothic provides a one-stop resource which details and defines, in accessible ...language, those contexts essential for the study of the Gothic in all periods and media. The volume is divided into three sections: Concepts and Terms; Theories of the Gothic; and Key Fictional Texts. Bibliographies are provided with the last two sections. The book clearly explains the critical terms – from 'Ab-human' to 'Zombie' – as well as the main theories, including ecocriticism, queer theory and Postcolonial theory, which any student of the Gothic is likely to encounter. This book will be a reliable companion for students of the genre from school and through university. Key Features * Covers the Gothic from the eighteenth century to the present * Provides a comprehensive survey not just of movements and theories but also of the essential terminology used in Gothic Studies * A reference work for those working with genres inflected by the Gothic, such as Romanticism, theatre studies and crime writing * Provides a readily accessible resource for developing further research
