A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares

ISBN-13: 9780199262182 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 342 str.

Robert Mighall

Opis

This is the first major full-length study of Victorian Gothic fiction. Combining original readings of familiar texts with a rich store of historical sources, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction is an historicist survey of nineteenth-century Gothic writing--from Dickens to Stoker, Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle, through European travelogues, sexological textbooks, ecclesiastic histories and pamphlets on the perils of self-abuse. Critics have thus far tended to concentrate on specific angles of Gothic writing (gender or race), or the belief that the Gothic 'returned' at the so-called fin de siecle. Robert Mighall, by contrast, demonstrates how the Gothic mode was active throughout the Victorian period, and provides historical explanations for its development from late eighteenth century, through the 'Urban Gothic' fictions of the mid-Victorian period, the 'Suburban Gothic' of the Sensation vogue, through to the somatic horrors of Stevenson, Machen, Stoker, and Doyle at the century's close. Mighall challenges the psychological approach to Gothic fiction which currently prevails, demonstrating the importance of geographical, historical, and discursive factors that have been largely neglected by critics, and employing a variety of original sources to demonstrate the contexts of Gothic fiction and explain its development in the Victorian period.
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Recenzje

... excellent book .. this is an original, thoughtful and ground-breaking book. No student of Victorian literature can afford to neglect it. Unusually for a critical book, it is also great fun

O autorze

Robert Mighall is an Honorary Research Fellow in English Literature at University College London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He also held the position of Editor of Penguin Classics. His publications include an edited selection of Oscar Wilde's poetry for Everyman and Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray for Penguin Classics. He currently works as a consultant on corporate identity and communications at Citigate Lloyd Northover.