Gothic and the Comic Turn

by A. Horner, Kenneth J Falconer

Overview

Although Gothic writing is now seen as significant for an understanding of modernity, it is still largely characterized as a literature of fear and anxiety. Gothic and the Comic Turn argues that, partly through its desire to be taken seriously, Gothic criticism has neglected the comic doppelganger that has always inhabited the Gothic mode and which in certain texts emerges as dominant. Tracing an historical trajectory from the late Romantic period through to the present day, this book examines how varieties of comic parody and appropriation have interrogated the complexities of modern subjectivity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333771518
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	11/30/2004
Edition description:	2005
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

Avril Horner is Professor of English Literature at Kingston University, London. Sue Zlosnik is Head of the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Late Romantic Turn Realism and Romance Towards Gothic Modernism Topography and the Comic Gothic Turn Women Writing Women Men Writing Men Afterword Index

Editorial Reviews

'This is an ambitious and original book, the culmination of a project on which the authors have been working for a number of years. It will prove a real contribution to the study of the Gothic, not an easy topic about which to write in terms of comedy. The authors have found a new viewpoint, and they develop it with style and critical tact, and in a manner accessible to a wide readership.' - David Punter, Professor of English, University of Bristol

'Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik's Gothic and the Comic Turn offers an original approach to one area that has received comparatively little attention... [A]n ambitious project spanning nearly two centuries... Gothic and the Comic Turn offers fresh motivation to revisit familiar works and to investigate some unfamiliar ones as well.' - Christopher C. Nagle, Wordsworth Circle

From the Publisher