Synopses & Reviews
This fascinating study examines the rise of fantastic and frénétique literature in Europe during the nineteenth century, introducing readers to lesser-known writers like Paul Féval and Charles Nodier, whose vampires, ghouls, and doppelgängers were every bit as convincing as those of the more famous Bram Stoker and Ann Radcliffe, but whose political motivations were far more serious. Matthew Gibson demonstrates how these writers used the conventions of the Gothic to attack both the French Revolution and the rise of materialism and positivism during the Enlightenment. At the same time, Gibson challenges current understandings of the fantastic and the literature of terror as promulgated by critics like Tzvetan Todorov, David Punter, and Fred Botting.
Review
“Of all the current debates in the burgeoning field of gothic studies, perhaps the most urgent concerns the nature and significance of the continental tradition of the
conte fantastique. Not only does Matthew Gibson’s groundbreaking study provide the first coherent assessment of post-Napoleonic European Gothic, it also explores the impact that this politically and philosophically subversive continental tradition had on British writers as divergent as Sheridan Le Fanu and Robert Louis Stevenson. Linking as it does post-Revolutionary French history with the rise of French and German romanticism and, ultimately, the Victorian Gothic, this book challenges many of our own assumptions about nineteenth-century generic conventions.”
Choice
Review
“Gibsons provocative argument challenging the view that the horror and terror of the Gothic and fantastic are ‘due to the resurgence of pre-Enlightenment order makes him an important voice in gothic studies. . . . Highly recommended.” C. L. Bandish, Bluffton University
Synopsis
This iconoclastic book challenges and changes accepted opinions about the Gothic novel, and will introduce the British and American Reader to works hitherto unknown to them, but rivals in quality to the works of writers like Radcliffe, Lewis and Stoker.
About the Author
Matthew Gibson is associate professor of English literature at the University of Macau, China.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Fantasy and Counter-Revolution in the Theory and Fiction of Charles Nodier
2. History and Politics in the Fantastic Fiction of Hoffmann, and his Reception in France
3. The Double Life of the Artist in the Récits fantastiques of Théophile Gautier, and the Rejection of Bourgeois Life under the July Monarchy
4. ‘A Life in Death a Death in Life: The Legitimist Novels of Paul Féval and the Catastrophe of the Second Empire
5. Paul Févals Le Chevalier Ténèbre and Le Fauns ‘The Room in the Dragon Volant: the Failures of the Bourbon Restoration
6. Robert Louis Stevensons ‘Olalla, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the Refutation of Utilitarian Morality
Conclusion
Notes
Short Chronology of Relevant EventsBibliographyIndex