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 question 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.

Author Biography: Ruth Robbins teaches at the University of Luron.

Author Biography: Julian Wolfreys teaches at the University of Southern California.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349411726
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/04/2001
Edition description:	1st ed. 2000
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.02(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

Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors List of Illustrations Preface: 'I Could a Tale Unfold' or, the Promise of Gothic; R.Robbins & J.Wolfreys 'Designing Gourmet Children or, KIDS FOR DINNER!'; J.R.Kinkaid Resurrecting the Regency: Horror and Eighteenth-Century Comedy in Le Fanu's Fiction; V.Sage 'I Wants to Make your Flesh Creep': Notes toward a Reading of the Comic-Gothic in Dickens; J.Wolfreys Hopkins and the Gothic Body; R.J.C.Watt From King Arthur to Sidonia the Sorceress: The Dual Nature of Pre-Raphaelite Medievalism; J.-A.George Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Literary Influence, and Technologies of the Uncanny; A.Chapman The 'Anxious Dream': Julia Margaret Cameron's Gothic Perspective; M.Wynne-Davies Trance Gothic, 1882-1897; R.Luckhurst 'Withered, Wrinkled, and Loathsome of Visage': Reading the Ethics of the Souls and the Late-Victorian Gothic in The Picture of Dorian Gray; K.Womack Apparitions Can Be Deceptive: Vernon Lee's Androgynous Spectres; R.Robbins Gothic and Supernatural: Allegories at Work and Play in Kipling's Indian Fiction; P. Morey Archaeology and Gothic Desire: Vitality Beyond the Grave in H.Rider Haggard's Ancient Egypt; R.Pearson Bibliography 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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