Gothic Literature

“Lo humano es una historia, un cuento de hadas”: entrevista a Pedro Cabiya

by Kerstin Oloff

An interview with Pedro Cabiya about his new zombie novel.

Pedro Cabiya (1971), antes conocido como Diego Deni, figura entre los escritores recientes más originales del Caribe;... more Pedro Cabiya (1971), antes conocido como Diego Deni, figura entre los escritores recientes más originales del Caribe; su ya considerable obra demuestra eso que Juan Duchesne Winter entiende como una “voluntad estética inconforme” (35). Nació en Puerto Rico y reside desde hace diez años en la República Dominicana, algo que, según él mismo refiere, le acercó más a la “realidad del Caribe” (Rodríguez 2008). En Santo Domingo dirige el Centro de Lenguas y Culturas Modernas de la Universidad Iberoamericana (Unibe). Ha publicado varios textos literarios importantes, entre ellos las colecciones de cuentos Historias tremendas (1999) e Historias atroces (2003), y las novelas La cabeza(2007), Trance (2007) y, más recientemente, Malas hierbas (2010).

“Conservation of Energy, Individual Agency, and Gothic Terror in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle, or, What’s Scarier than an Ancient, Evil, Shape-shifting Bug?”

by Anna Maria Jones

Published in Victorian Literature & Culture 39.1 (2011)

“‘What should make thee inaccessible to my fury?’: Gothic Self-Possession, Revenge, and the Doctrine of Necessity in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams.”

by Anna Maria Jones

Published in European Romantic Review 22.2 (2011)

Policante, A. “Vampires of Capital: Gothic Reflections between Horror and Hope”, The Cultural Logic, 1, 2012.

by Amedeo Policante

At the beginning it is creativity, living labour. At the beginning, it is the free play of human beings transforming... more At the beginning it is creativity, living labour. At the beginning, it is the free play of human beings transforming the life-world of nature through the productive power of their minds and of their bodies. Through his own actions the worker “develops the potentialities slumbering within nature” and “subjects” the play of its forces to his own sovereign power.” At the end, it is capital: “dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” Capital furtively rises among the living and, from then on, “sucks up the worker’s value creating power” “transforming the worker into a crippled monstrosity.” But how can a dead body rise up and live off the living, how can “le mort saisit le vif”? This is for us the fundamental question of Capital. This is also the juncture through which it will be possible to bridge discussions of political economy, subjectivity/subjectification and commodity fetishism into one gothic metastructure.

*Bowen's Court* and the Anglo-Irish World-System

by Matthew Eatough

Modern Language Quarterly 73.1 (March 2012)

Bowen’s Court has most commonly been confronted through methodological paradigms stressing its affinity to traditional... more Bowen’s Court has most commonly been confronted through methodological paradigms stressing its affinity to traditional Irish generic and historiographical conventions. In contrast, this essay reassesses Anglo-Ireland’s contribution to early twentieth-century literature by rereading Elizabeth Bowen’s text within the context of an international cultural and economic world-system. It argues that two historical narratives inform Bowen’s Court: a gothic chronicle of decline and a protoprofessional story of detached expertise. These narratives correspond to two visions of Anglo-Ireland’s transnational position, the first conceiving of the Protestant Ascendancy as neofeudal landlords who transform Irish labor into capitalist wealth, the second characterizing the Anglo-Irish as a cosmopolitan class of professional managers. By regarding these socioeconomic roles as affective dispositions between which her class vacillated, Bowen creates a cyclical history in which the deficiencies of gothic hysteria and detached professionalism supplement each other in a dialectical exchange. Understanding the socioeconomic circumstances underlying Bowen’s Court provides an important insight into how Bowen and fellow Anglo-Irish writers used affect to legitimate their class position after Irish independence, as well as how they were able to envision an Anglo-Irish renaissance.

Immortal Longings and Mortal Repression - The Dark Romance Genre and Young Girls

by Hannah Love

submitted as part of my Mphil in Critical Approaches to Children's Literature

This study comprises of an exploration of the newly emerged ‘Dark Romance’ genre through the use of The Twilight Saga.... more This study comprises of an exploration of the newly emerged ‘Dark Romance’ genre through the use of The Twilight Saga. The Dark Romance novels are generally marketed at teenagers, but I address the decreasing age of the readership and explore the potential effects of such works on pre-adolescent female readers. In particular this thesis explores the possible impact of these texts on the readers’ sexual identity, and how any problems are exacerbated by the blend of genres found in the novels
The introduction provides a justification for a non-empirical research thesis and the necessary background information for the study; such as reading habits of young girls and the risk of identification, a discussion of the genres in Twilight, traditions in vampire literature, a clarification of terms regarding sexuality, and the research questions.

The first chapter addresses the presentation of sex and sexuality itself, using the theories of Michel Foucault as demonstrated in his History of Sexuality. Using J. A. Appleyard’s theory of reading stages, I then argue that the messages portrayed are all the more dangerous for young female readers experiencing literature as Appleyard suggests. The second chapter details the difficulties of identity formation for young girls, affected by their self perception and their interactions with others, using Robyn McCallum’s theory of ideology and identity, with particular reference to the Young Adult Elements of the Saga. The final chapter explores the Saga’s presentation of Bella’s escape from adolescence into a perfect, un-aging vampire, and the unattainable ideals that this portrays. I examine this using Jaques Lacan and Julia Kristeva’s theories of development along with Rosemary Jackson’s views regarding fantasy.
The conclusion explores what has been proved and its importance, as well as including suggestions of how the study could be developed further.

Vampir u popularnoj kulturi: od smrtonosnog negativca do junaka ljubavne priče

by Ljubica Matek

Co-authored with Marko Lukić

A closer reading of popular culture today will inevitably show a distinct increase in the use of elements and... more A closer reading of popular culture today will inevitably show a distinct increase in the use of elements and narratives belonging to the Gothic literary tradition. The vampire seems to be a particularly attractive monster character which slowly but steadily progressed from folklore into literature. As Botting states in Gothic, the image of the vampire, together with his alternative forms (rats, wolves and bats) symbolized the carrier and threat of the plague, believed since the Middle Ages to be originating from the East (95). Later on, it was interpreted as a metaphorical (or actual) plague set on conquering Victorian society, because of its inherent link to the East, the perverse and the sexual. With Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a movie which opts for a romantic reading of the novel, the vampire begins to lose its monsterly image as Count Dracula becomes humanized in his desire to find true love. This transformation of the vampire from a monster into a loving „other“ turned out to be highly influential. In their mass exploitation of the vampire, the contemporary authors take no advantage of the vampire’s potential to deal with a variety of relevant social and psychological issues, but focus on the vampire as an ideal lover; the allure of the “bloodsucker,” and of the Gothic in general, is used merely as a twist which gives romance novels and series a market advantage.

'Myself Creating What I Saw': The Morality of the Spectator In Eighteenth-Century Gothic

by Fiona Price

Published in Gothic Studies 8.2 (November 2006): 1-17.

Represented as feminised, the gothic's emotional and visual excess leads to its dismissal as artistically inferior.... more Represented as feminised, the gothic's emotional and visual excess leads to its dismissal as artistically inferior. However, this tendency can be reinterpreted as part of an important response to a tension between two key elements of eighteenth-century aesthetic thought: disinterestedness and sensibility. Although far from being necessarily incompatible, these came to possess significant points of friction. From its inception as a philosophical concept, the notion of disinterested sensibility was undermined by its connection with vision. Examining this in relation to the work of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Ann Radcliffe, Eliza Fenwick and Joanna Baillie, I contend that gothic fiction queries how the disinterested yet ethical spectator might be distinguished from the inhumane, voyeuristic consumer.

The Woman in White: Conceptions of Femininity and Masculinity

by Dario Abram

SSSL CFPs (MLA 2013)

by Daniel Cross Turner

L'invasion néo-zombie Entre l'abjection, le grotesque et le pathos (2002-2009)

by antonio dominguez leiva

El laberinto imaginario de Jan Potocki: Manuscrito encontrado en Zaragoza

by antonio dominguez leiva

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident

by antonio dominguez leiva

Gothic Galicia

by antonio dominguez leiva

Dorian G (r) ay: el monstruo en el armario

by antonio dominguez leiva

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident: du legs médiéval à la post-modernité:(une archéologie du supplice et du macabre), 1450 …

by antonio dominguez leiva

"Il Mediterraneo gotico di Ann Radcliffe: A Sicilian Romance (1790)", in: Racconto senza fine. Per Antonio Pioletti. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2011, p. 23-33

by Stefania Arcara

Towards a Prehistory of the Gothic Mode in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Writing

by Edmund King

Journal of New Zealand Literature 28, no. 2 (2010): 35-57

Castle, Ascendency and Ambivalence in Bram Stoker's Dracula

by Gregory Castle

Ambivalence and Ascendancy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” In Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Ed. John Paul Riquelme. Case Studies... more Ambivalence and Ascendancy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” In Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Ed. John Paul Riquelme. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford Books, 2002. 518-37.

Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 144. Ed. Janet Witalec. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2004. 355-364.

E. Baldini, S. Trevisan, eds, Ravenna e i suoi fantasmi (1894): Un racconto “dimenticato” di Vernon Lee e note sull’immagine e l’immaginario di una città [Ravenna and Her Ghosts (1894): A “forgotten” short story by Vernon Lee, and notes on the image and representation of a city] (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2005)

by Sara Trevisan