Synopses & Reviews
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.
Synopsis
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
About the Author
Ruth Robbins teaches at the University of Luron.
Julian Wolfreys teaches at the University of Southern California.
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