Victorian Gothic: Literary and Cultural Manifestations in the Nineteenth Century

by J. Wolfreys (Editor), R. Robbins (Editor)

Overview

To what extent did the Gothic haunt the nineteenth century? Victorian Gothic seeks to answer this as it introduces the reader to a timely revision of notions of the Gothic in all its manifestations. The Gothic is found to haunt all aspects of Victorian literature and culture. Moreover, Victorian Gothic connects its disparate areas of research in returning repeatedly to the question of the constitution of the subject, in a study of the Victorians from the 1830s to the 1890s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312231699
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	09/25/2000
Edition description:	2000
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

ALISON CHAPMAN Lecturer in Literature, University of Dundee J.-A. GEORGE Teacher of English and Drama, University of Dundee JAMES R. KINKAID Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California ROGER LUCKHURST Lecturer, Birkbeck College, University of London PETER MOREY Lecturer, Department of Cultural Studies, University of East London RICHARD PEARSON Lecturer in English, University College Worcester VICTOR SAGE Reader in Literature, University of East Anglia R.J.C. WATT Senior Lecturer in English, University of Dundee KENNETH WOMACK Assistant Professor, Department of English, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona MARION WYNNE-DAVIES Lecturer in English, University of Dundee

Table of Contents

Introduction--Ruth Robbins & Julian Wolfreys
• Part I: "You could die laughing": The Gothic-Comic Impulse
• Resurrecting the Regency--Victor Sage
• Urban Disturbances or, Doubling Dickens--Julian Wolfreys
• Designing Gourmet Children or, Kids for Dinner--James R. Kincaid
• Part II: Gothic Affections
• The "Anxious Dream"--Marion Wynne-Davies
• Ideal Manhood Closed in Meal Man--Jodi-Anne George
• Part III: Gothic Subjectiveness and Technologies of the Uncanny
• Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Literary Influence, and the Uncanny--Alison Chapman
• Apparitions Can Be Deceptive--Ruth Robbins
• Adventures in Neo-Mesmerism 1880-1900--Roger Luckhurst
• Part IV: The Returns of the Repressed
• "This monstrous soul-life"--Moyra Haslett
• Close Encounters of the Other Kind--Meike Prescher
• Archaeology and Gothic Desire--Richard Pearson
• Gothic and Supernatural--Peter Morey
• Index

Editorial Reviews

Twelve essays represent current thinking on the gothic in the 19th century, while offering new departures on the topic and suggesting new ways in which the gothic may be understood from various theoretical, historical, and cultural perspectives in relation to the Victorian epoch. The gothic is found to haunt all aspects of Victorian literature and culture, from the comedy of Dickens and Le Fanu, to the technology of photography, and the attitudes of the British towards questions of Empire and the foreign "other." Robbins teaches at Nene College, UK; Wolfreys teaches English at the University of Florida. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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