Contemporary Spanish Gothic

Abstract

This book considers the Gothic as mode in contemporary Spanish culture. Its underlying principle is to see the contemporary Spanish Gothic as part of a wider, transnational Gothic continuum. Therefore, although the proposed book will seek to tease out the Gothic specifically within Spanish culture it seeks simultaneously to connect that culture with debates further afield, looking at the interplay between national and transnational concerns. Its theoretical underpinning lies primarily within Gothic scholarship but also draws on the scholarship of contemporary Spanish and transnational culture. The book refigures the idea of transcultural reinscription away from the implied sense of a unidirectional flow. Instead, it takes the contemporary Gothic not as simply a reinscription specifically within Spanish culture, but as multiple and simultaneous reinscriptions whereby Spanish culture comes to participate in a wider Gothic in which the generic and the specific are constantly in play and at play. It does this through a series of case studies: Goya biopics, bestselling novels, the haunted house in Spanish film, the Gothic camera, Gothic medicine and the body.