Gothic Motifs Research Articles

In the Footsteps of the “Goldsmith of Magical Wonders”

Abstract Pío Baroja (1872–1956), the most prolific novelist of the so-called Spanish Generation of '98, began his literary career as a storyteller. The publication of Vidas sombrías (Somber Lives) in 1900, a volume of over thirty stories set in the Basque Country, Madrid and Valencia, earned him wide critical acclaim, despite its poor reception by Spanish readers. Baroja himself acknowledged that four or five of the stories were written in imitation of Edgar Allan Poe. This article explores traces of Poe in Baroja's early storytelling, although it sets out by considering a concept such as unity of sensation (unity of effect), which Baroja indeed borrowed from Poe, although he never acknowledged this. My central concern here is that Baroja's early admiration of the writer from Boston manifests itself in the adoption of bleak landscapes, Gothic interiors, and psychologically unstable characters. This trend was soon to be abandoned, although Baroja's concept of the novel, a development of Poe's poetics of the tale, would remain with the Basque writer for the rest of his life. The final part of this study analyzes Poe-like elements—literary devices, Gothic motifs, semantic structures—which can be found in “Médium,” one of the stories in Vidas sombrías.

On being one’s own heir: British portraiture, metaphysical inheritance, and The Picture of Dorian Gray

Much scholarship on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray has focused on its possible textual sources and its place in literary traditions. This article demonstrates that by contextualizing the novel in the history of art and the tradition of British portraiture, we can answer significant yet overlooked questions, such as why Wilde chose “picture” rather than “portrait” for his title and be better prepared to appreciate the serious themes underlying the fantastical tale. The magical portrait of Dorian is most readily identifiable as a literary gothic motif, yet, in developing his central plot device, Wilde also draws on metaphysical and mystical theories of portraiture current in the British tradition and from throughout the history of art. These, in turn, are rooted in wide-ranging superstitions and other cultural attitudes toward imagery that have proven both influential and enduring. The philosophical symbolism of Wilde’s portrait contributes to a narrative of metaphysical inheritance and an allegory of arrested development through which Wilde can also test certain aesthetic doctrines: these, however cherished, are seen to fail in Dorian’s case.

Haunting Realities: Naturalist Gothic and American Realism

Haunting Realities: Naturalist Gothic and American Realism

Falling into the existential abyss: Ivan Franko’s realist prose in experiments with Gothic and crime fiction modes

ABSTRACTThis article examines three novels by Ukrainian realist Ivan Franko (1856–1916): Dlia domashn'oho ohnyshcha (For the Home Hearth, 1892), Osnovy suspil'nosti (Pillars of Society, 1894), and Perekhresni stezhky (Fateful Crossroads, 1900). Previous scholars saw elements of crime fiction in these works, but the actual relationship between the two genres of crime fiction and realism has not been fully developed. By studying the conventions of crime fiction, along with its antecedent, the Gothic, and their influence on Franko, the author shows the make-up of the early Ukrainian crime fiction genre and points to its importance in understanding Franko’s vacillation between realist and modernist tendencies. As she argues, the scales of his vacillation are tipped toward modernism in its decadent form, an existential void that characterized fin de siècle Europe. Hence, Franko’s “ideal” or programmatic realism (defined by Franko as a literary style with a didactic tendency aimed at educating society), which he introduced under the appealing cover of crime and Gothic motifs, ultimately failed him. The author proposes that it is the creative modes (Gothic and crime fiction) that Franko chose for voicing his ideas about social reforms that led him, unsuspectingly, away from his programmatic goal and toward the decadent aspects of modernism.

Repetition and Textual Transmission: The Gothic Motif in Goethe's Faust and "Von deutscher Baukunst"

Repetition and Textual Transmission:The Gothic Motif in Goethe's Faust and "Von deutscher Baukunst" Jessica C. Resvick Act 2 of faust ii opens in the same setting in which the reader first encounters the title figure in part one of the drama. As the title of the first scene in act 2 announces: "HOCHGEWÖLBTES / ENGES, GOTISCHES ZIMMER / ehemals Faustens, unverändert" ("A HIGH-VAULTED, NARROW GOTHIC ROOM / Faust's former study is unchanged").1 While repetitions or "wiederholte Spiegelungen" ("repeated mirror reflections"2) abound in Faust, this particular instance of repetition is noteworthy for the manner in which it initiates a lengthy series of references to the Scholar's Tragedy of part one. Not only is a previous setting recreated, but long-forgotten characters suddenly return, and Mephistopheles and the pupil from "Studierzimmer [II]" ("Faust's Study"), now a Baccalaureate, even review their earlier conversation. Yet explanations of the significance of these returns are surprisingly sparse. Jochen Schmidt sees in the two opening scenes of act 2 references to the Middle Ages that allow the modern economy and the spirit of the Renaissance to burst out all the more powerfully on stage.3 Jane Brown, by contrast, makes note of parodic elements in the opening scene as well as a general emphasis on generativity, both of which foreshadow the remainder of act 2.4 While these interpretations offer insight into act 2 as a whole, they do not go particularly far in explaining the return to part one within part two. Why, for example, is it necessary to preface the "Klassische Walpurgisnacht" ("Classical Walpurgis Night") with descriptions of Faust's study, or of the pen he used to sign the wager with Mephistopheles? Why do the Baccalaureate and Mephistopheles discuss their initial encounter from part one? Do these scenes merely remind the reader,5 as though he or she would forget, that a wager exists between Faust and Mephistopheles, or that the Scholar's Tragedy began in this setting? This article endeavors to clarify the significance of the hochgewölbtes, enges, gotisches Zimmer by tracing the Gothic motif throughout Faust I/II and throughout two of Goethe's essays on Gothic architecture, both entitled "Von deutscher Baukunst" ("On German Architecture"). As I show in the following, the repetition of this motif illustrates how the Goethean model of repetition—"wiederholte Spiegelungen"—operates at the paradigmatic level [End Page 133] of an individual text and how it functions more broadly as a means of poetic production across an entire corpus, providing structural links both between discrete linguistic elements or individual passages and between whole texts. Furthermore, I demonstrate that this paradigm of repetition is connected in "Von deutscher Baukunst" and Faust I/II to modes of cultural production, such as architecture and writing, as well as to their medial transmission, with Faust II performing via its own publication the mode of transmission central to Goethe's architectural aesthetics. The operative concept of transmission here works on multiple levels. It has an internal dramatic significance within Faust and has correlates in Goethe's natural-philosophical thought; more broadly, it relates to history and tradition and occupies a central position in the poetic process. Rather than examining each of these registers separately, I discuss them together so as to highlight the importance of transmission across Goethe's oeuvre. Since this article takes as its impetus an instance of repetition, it is necessary first to clarify Goethe's understanding of the concept. In an 1823 text, which Eckermann later gave the title "Wiederholte Spiegelungen," Goethe draws on an entoptical metaphor to outline the manner in which repetition intensifies [steigern] some original content of memory. An internal image [Bild] is externalized and reflected ("abermals abgespiegelt," FA 1.17:370). The impression (Eindruck) of the afterimage (Nachbild) upon the recipient then awakens a deep interest in the past, which is subsequently represenced. "Hier entsteht nun … die Möglichkeit ein Wahrhaftes wiederherzustellen; aus Trümmern von Daseyn und Ueberlieferung sich eine Zweyte Gegenwart zu verschaffen" (FA 1.17:370–71; There arises here the possibility of reproducing something true; of procuring from the ruins of being and tradition a Second Presence). This same mode of...

Anmerkungen zur Baugeschichte der St. Olaikirche auf Worms (Vormsi) im Bistum Ösel-Wiek (Saare-Lääne)

Vormsi is a small island that belonged to the Oesel-Wiek bishopric during the Middle Ages. There is a church on the island that is dedicated to St Olaf, the Norwegian king who was undoubtedly the most popular saint among the Scandinavians. A short article written by Villem Raam in the anthology Eesti Arhitektuur (Estonian Architecture, 1996) is the only one worth mentioning that has appeared to date on the architectural history of the Vormsi church.The Vormsi church is comprised of a sanctuary and nave. Only the sanctuary was completed during the Middle Ages, and the stone nave was not completed until 1632. During the restoration of the church between 1989 and 1990, fragments were found of the foundation of the wooden church that predated the stone one. It is possible that the wooden church was utilised throughout the Middle Ages as a congregation room.Currently, it is believed that the Vormsi sanctuary was built during the 15th century. This dating is based on the pyramid-shaped vault consoles – a similar shape also appears in the chapel of the gate tower in the Padise Cistercian monastery. Actually, the Padise consoles have been reused. Their original location is unknown and their completion is impossible to date even within the time frame of a century.The most significant is the eastern wall of the Vormsi sanctuary, where a spacious niche with pointed arch is located. This Cistercian composition was also used in the Haapsalu Cathedral and apparently that was the model for the Vormsi church. The Haapsalu Cathedral is a surprisingly simple single-nave church with three bays. The church has richly decorated capitals on its wall pillars, on which both Romanesque and Early Gothic motifs have been used. At least some of the capitals have been hewn by a master who previously worked on the construction of the capital hall in the Riga Cathedral. The northern section of the Haapsalu Cathedral was apparently built in the 1260s. In the vicinity of Riga there is a church with a floor plan that is an exact counterpart to the one in Haapsalu – the Holme / Martinsala Church that dates back to about the 13th century. Considering both the floor plan and the sculptured decorations, it is believable that the designers and builders of the Haapsalu Cathedral came from the Riga environs.Pärnu is also on the Riga-Haapsalu route. Actually, two towns existed there during the Middle Ages. For a short time, Old-Pärnu on the right bank of the river had been the centre of the Oesel-Wiek bishopric before Haapsalu. However, the left bank of the river was controlled by the Livonian Order. There is very little information about the Old-Pärnu Cathedral that was completed around 1251 and destroyed by the Lithuanians in 1263. However, one thing is known – it also had a single-nave with three bays. There is no information about the design of the eastern wall of the cathedral. However, the sanctuary of St Nicholas’ Church in New-Pärnu had an eastern niche similar to the one in Haapsalu. It is not impossible that the motif was borrowed from the cathedral across the river or its ruins. Attention should also be paid to the fact that the design of the northern and southern walls in the sanctuary of Pärnu’s St Nicholas’ Church are similar to the Vormsi church. Therefore, there is no doubt that these two sanctuaries are architecturally and genetically related. Apparently the Vormsi sanctuary was built immediately or soon after the completion of the Haapsalu Cathedral – not later than 1270. It is not impossible that the vaults were constructed sometime later.The vault painting in the Vormsi sanctuary is probably inspired by the “paradise vaults” in Gotland. The Vormsi painting is strikingly primitive. In Estonia, this primitive style can also be seen in the churches in Ridala and Pöide.There is a squint (hagioscope) on the southern wall of the Vormsi church sanctuary, and an unusual sacrament niche with a light shaft in the eastern wall. This does not date back to the time when the sanctuary was built, but was added later. There have been at least eight such sacrament niches in Estonia, most of which were built in the 15th century.

Burlesco, satírico e duplo: as faces de “O Duque de L’Omelette”

“O Duque de L’Omelette” é um conto do escritor Edgar Allan Poe publicado em 1832 pelo periódico Philadelphia Saturday Courier. Nesta obra satírica, Poe elege o motivo gótico do pacto com o diabo, mas seu sarcasmo tem alusões contextuais específicas e, portanto, a crítica considerou o relato menos importante em si mesmo. O objetivo deste estudo é definir o duplo como um tema do gênero Fantástico que possivelmente segue presente nesta narrativa burlesca de Poe.

Norris, David A. Haunted Serbia: Representations of History and War in the Literary Imagination (review)

REVIEWS 353 Norris, David A. Haunted Serbia: Representations of History and War in the Literary Imagination. Legenda and Routledge, Oxford and Abingdon, 2016. ix + 189 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £75.00. Norris’s study examines Serbian literature of the last three decades, and finds it haunted by the spectres of history and war: initially by revisiting and examining the official history of the Second World War during the last decade of Communist rule, and subsequently by coming to terms with the Wars of Yugoslav Succession 1991–99. Norris finds that the corpus he analysed — a long list which includes the most important works of narrative fiction published during the period — demonstrates a remarkable presence of the motifs usually found in Gothic literature. The author, however, does not propose the idea of a Gothic revival, but interprets Gothic motifs — spectres, ghosts, the uncanny, the grotesque, etc. — as the means Serbian literature employed in the process of political, intellectual and moral transition from old certainties to new visions. The first chapter deals with the political position awarded to literature in the Communist ‘order of discourses’ following the Second World War, and by presenting evidence that mechanisms of constraint and low-key censorship continued to operate until the very end of the state’s existence, Norris corrects those researchers who have recently emphasised the relative liberality of Yugoslav cultural policy. The second and third chapters analyse the literature of the 1980s — the period between Tito’s death and the start of a new war — in which the official history of the war and revolution was re-examined: the suppressed, inconvenient aspects of the former here return, literally, as ghosts to haunt the reader. Some of these works were discussed by political scientists in the large body of literature that accompanied the wars of the 1990s, and these discussions were rarely informed by the analytical skills which one would expect of anyone writing about literature in the twentieth century. For example, a political scientist accused the works which thematized the Second World War of presenting it from the ‘standpoint of national suffering’ — to which Norris calmly replies that war literature indeed always focuses on suffering. What else could you expect in a war novel? Norris’s main issue with this kind of reading is, however, that it tends to simplify complex literary texts, to eliminate everything literary from them, to disregard the complexity of meaning production in fiction, and to read them ‘according to a mimetic code of representation’. Norris demonstrates that the narrative fiction produced in thisperiodwaslessconcernedwithimposingaparticularversionofthewarand revolution, and more with exploring the ways in which historical knowledge is constructed. In this respect, the contemporary historical novel (not only those within Serbian literature) has more in common with discussions on historiographical method than with actual histories: the question is less ‘how SEER, 95, 2, APRIL 2017 354 it really happened’ and more ‘what is the nature of history and memory as narrative processes’. The fourth chapter consolidates this claim by examining the works of authors who apparently have little in common — Danilo Kiš and Antonije Isaković, for example — and demonstrates how fruitful a reading can be when it is no longer under any obligation to focus on the immediate link between literature and current political events. The fifth, sixth and seventh chapters examine the literary production of the 1990s which accompanied the Wars of Yugoslav Succession: here Norris demonstrates how the reality of war, over and above any mimetic code of representation and explicit messages, can be presented through the tension between the narrative requirement to tell a coherent story and the essential incoherence which expresses the chaos and senselessness of events. As the literature of the preceding decade all but discredited any idea of an official narrative of the Second World War and put into question the logic of coherent narrative representation of complex historical events, the literature of the 1990s could not but follow in its steps. In the fictional narratives which accompanied the wars in the 1990s, Norris sees, in addition to the uncanny motifs which mark the whole period examined, ‘wry laughter challenging the official pronouncement of all sides’. Norris also places all his findings in a larger comparative...

Gothic Landscapes and Seascapes: Dark Regions in Wilkie Collins’s The Dead Secret

Wilkie Collins's The Dead Secret , arguably one of his most critically neglected novels, exercises the same concerns with ancestry, inheritance, and history as developed in Collins's later works, projected upon a Cornish landscape. In exploring the way Collins uses Cornwall (a location he had already toyed with in Basil and Rambles Beyond Railways ), representations of the Cornish, and specifically Cornish seascapes, I propose that Collins is employing Cornwall as an ideal playground in which to experiment with his reworkings of Gothic tropes and motifs. Indeed, Collins's Cornwall provides a means of understanding debates surrounding regional identities and a lens through which to comprehend the Cornish quest to reclaim a notion of Celtic identity in the late nineteenth century. Collins’s use of seascapes, ruins, transgression, and deadly secrets not only reimagines Gothic tropes in a Victorian context, but also uses them to express anxieties regarding disintegration of self, society, and borders in the period.

Deconstructing the Damsel in Distress: Gothic Revisions of Gender and Agency in Julia Ward Howe's The Hermaphrodite

Deconstructing the Damsel in Distress:Gothic Revisions of Gender and Agency in Julia Ward Howe's The Hermaphrodite Heather E. Barrett (bio) Julia Ward Howe read voraciously throughout her youth, despite her father's efforts to restrict her reading. She particularly enjoyed perusing the books her brother Samuel brought home from Europe. As she recalled many years later in her autobiographical Reminiscences (1899), "I lived, indeed, much in my books, and my sphere of thought was a good deal enlarged . … Yet I seemed to myself like a young damsel of olden time, shut up within an enchanted castle … [and] my dear father, with all his noble generosity and overweening affection, sometimes appeared to me as my jailer."1 When she characterizes herself as a hapless heroine entrapped by an older, overbearing villain, Howe simultaneously invokes another genre: the gothic novel.2 Howe also uses this familiar gothic motif to challenge antebellum American women's disenfranchisement in a much earlier text: her fragmentary tale about an ambiguously-sexed character named Laurence, which was posthumously published under the title The Hermaphrodite (2004). Because Howe wrote this story in the late 1840s during her difficult first years as a wife and mother, the scholars who initially examined it argued that its gothic elements reflect her domestic frustrations.3 More recently, [End Page 1] critics have focused on the theme of monstrosity as it shapes not only Laurence's self-identification as a "beautiful monster" (193), but also the text's depictions of his prospective lovers, Emma and Ronald, whose unrequited passion overwhelms their reason and drives them to madness and violence.4 Yet while analyzing Laurence's fraught erotic bonds usefully illuminates how intricately the text depicts both same- and opposite-sex desire, we risk oversimplifying Laurence's significance as the antebellum era's most complexly gendered protagonist if we focus exclusively on his romantic and sexual experiences. In this essay, I turn away from these partnerships to focus on the equally troubled relationship between Laurence and his father, whom Laurence derisively refers to as Paternus. As Nicole Livengood has noted, this name frames Laurence's father as "a synecdoche for patriarchal culture."5 Building on this insight, I contend that examining the relationship between Laurence and his father yields a richer understanding of how The Hermaphrodite engages with questions of gender and power. Specifically, I suggest that The Hermaphrodite structures Laurence and Paternus' relationship by appropriating and revising aspects of the genre now known as the female gothic.6 Ellen Moers describes the traditional female gothic plot as centering on "a young woman who is simultaneously persecuted victim and courageous heroine" while an older male villain seizes her property, limits her mobility, and keeps family secrets from her until a younger male hero rescues and marries her.7 Through these stories about "women trying to escape from decaying family estates and perverse patriarchs," female gothic novels express fear of "the unchecked power of men and … explore possibilities of resistance to the patriarchal order."8 I begin this essay by surveying current scholarly debates about what this resistance looks like in canonical female gothic novels. In the section two, I show that The Hermaphrodite depicts [End Page 2] Paternus as a gothic patriarch who threatens his child with disinheritance, imprisonment, and the exposure of his body's secrets. Simultaneously, I argue that the text casts the ambiguously-sexed but male-identifying Laurence as a gothic "heroine" who employs unconventional strategies to cope with these generically conventional threats to his physical and financial autonomy. Yet unlike many traditional gothic heroines, Laurence does not resist these threats by choosing a marriage partner and forming a new, more egalitarian family. Instead, as I discuss in section three, he refuses to maintain any interpersonal bond and establishes a financially and intellectually independent life. As The Hermaphrodite rejects a closure that prioritizes romance and reproduction, Howe indicts marriage and motherhood for circumscribing antebellum women's freedom, and she envisions what a life lived outside these institutions might resemble. At the same time, because Laurence's repeated assertions of personal freedom result in perpetual loneliness and suffering, The Hermaphrodite does not finally present his character as a viable model...

The “Gothic Complex” in Shelley Revisited

About forty years ago, when I was a new Ph.D., Percy Bysshe Shelley (as opposed to Mary Shelley) and Gothic were not considered important subjects of study, at least not together, and Gothic as one of P.B. Shelley's styles was relegated to his two highly imitative early novels of 1810-11, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, along with some early poetry. For last few decades this dissociation has been only gradually [right arrow]corrected by sporadic studies (such as those by Finch, Rajan, and Whatley) that have seen Gothic motifs in several Shelley masterworks long after his early novels. But not until recently has pervasiveness of Gothic in Shelley been fulsomely and continuously examined to point of generating ongoing debate about what that migration reveals. In 2015, a volume in Romantic Circles Praxis series published several new essays on Shelley and Gothic (see Brookshire), and range of debate is not stopping there. It is thus only fitting for me to offer another possible answer to a surprisingly current question: what does it mean in Shelley's thinking and for Gothic that it migrates across his work as widely and as persistently as it does? In one of those Romantic Circles essays, I offered beginnings of such an answer by proposing what I called the Gothic in Shelley (Hogle 2015), but even I did not realize then just how far it goes in a great deal of his work. I would therefore like to use this opportunity, in honor of Robert Fangbaum's pioneering work on Romanticism, to modify my past short-sightedness and, I hope, deepen my sense of that complex to offer some better explanations of why schemes from Gothic--descended, yes, from Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764)--are really essential to Shelley for iconoclastic questioning and reworking of Western assumptions that he aims to incite in his readers. First, let me note briefly that I do not think what I call Gothic complex explains every use of Gothic figures in every one of Shelley's works; hence great insights in what is revealed in recent scholarship on this subject by other authors (especially Rajan). But I do believe that this coalescence, which I see as a series of steps often taken by Shelley, and speakers or characters of his, in writings from Zastrozzi onwards, is a method he uses amazingly often to jolt his audience out of stultified modes of thought towards transformations that begin to offer a different vision of world, yet without discounting lingering human attachment to older ways of thinking. The steps in this Gothic complex are usually five, as I see them, and readers can witness an instance of all five at work in this passage from Shelley's flagrantly Gothic Zastrozzi: Scarcely knowing where he was, or what to believe, for a few moments Verezzi stood bewildered, and unable to arrange confusion of ideas which floated in his brain, and assailed his terror-struck imagination. He knew not what to believe--what phantom it could be that, in shape of Zastrozzi, blasted his straining eye-balls --Could it really be Zastrozzi? Could his most rancorous, his bitterest enemy, be thus beloved, thus confided in, by perfidious Matilda? For several moments he stood doubting what he should resolve upon. At one while he determined to reproach Matilda with treachery and baseness, and overwhelm her in mid-career of wickedness; but at last concluding it to be more politic to dissemble and subdue his emotions, he went into breakfast-parlour which he had left, and seated himself as if nothing had happened, at a drawing which he had left incomplete. Besides, perhaps Matilda might not be guilty--perhaps she was deceived; and though some scheme of villainy and destruction to himself was preparing, she might be dupe, and not coadjutor, of Zastrozzi. The idea that she was innocent soothed him; for he was anxious to make up, in his own mind, for injustice which he had been guilty of towards her: and though he could not conquer disgusting ideas, unaccountable detestations, which often, in spite of himself, filled his soul towards her, he was willing to overcome what he considered but as an illusion of imagination, and to pay that just tribute of esteem to her virtues which they demanded. …

Polite Hauntings: Same-Sex Eroticism in Sophie Albrecht’sDas höfliche Gespenst

This article analyzes Sophie Albrecht’s Das höfliche Gespenst (1797) as a text that employs Gothic motifs to explore queer identity and female same-sex eroticism. The article first identifies the queer nature of the female protagonists and their relationship. It then examines how queer desire is thematized through communicative difficulties, including the excessively polite language referenced in the title. It concludes by exploring the role of the embedded narrative in vilifying queer desire from the perspective of heteronormative society. In doing so, this Gothic text allows moments of female same-sex desire but ultimately reinstates a patriarchal viewpoint that silences queer possibilities.

Готика во французской теории архитектуры и графике второй половины XVI – XVII века

The French theoretical thought and architectural drawings of the second half of the 16th– 18th centuries were influenced by Gothic heritage. In the treatises by Philibert Delorme, the features of the ribbed vault, along with pointed and keel arches were discussed, and the “French order” was mentioned. François Blondel notes harmonic proportions of the façade of the Milan Cathedral. Jacques Androuet Ducerceau develops the idea of combining Baroque and late Gothic details in the decoration of buildings; in the treatise The most excellent buildings of France, he reproduces architectural structures of the Late Middle Ages. In the creative work of Etienne Martelange, sketches depicting medieval churches are fundamentally important. Abraham Bosse uses Gothic motifs in his etchings. André Félibien reproduces the construction associated with the French crown. Bernard de Montfaucon in The Monuments of the French monarchy embodied the sculpture of the facades of Gothic churches. Seroux d’Agincourt publishes an essay on history of art meticulously reproducing the works of medieval art. French architectural graphics of the 16th–18th centuries are like a path from Renaissance treatises using Gothic details through the practical study of scientific illustrations, which generally reflects the attitude toward Gothic reminiscences and the main vector of developing graphical reproductions of buildings of this period.

Gothic science fiction: 1818 to the present

1: 'One Dreary Night': Early Science Fiction and the Gothic 2. 'Mad? Is one who has solved the secret of life to be considered mad?': The Role of the Mad Scientist in Gothic Science Fiction 3. 'The Last Man in the World': Gothic Motif in the Apocalyptical Novel 4. 'Its life, Jim, but not as we know it': The Gothic Monster in Science Fiction 5. 'One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back': Immortality and the Fight for Humanity in Gothic Science Fiction 6. 'Henceforth you shall be known as Darth Vader': The Battle between Good and Evil in Gothic Science Fiction 7. 'We are forever in debt to the Dynamic Duo': The Role of the Superhero in Gothic Science Fiction 8. 'Science Fiction and Gothic?...It is strange that the genres should cross at all': In Conclusion Understanding Gothic Science Fiction

The black female slave takes literary revenge: Female gothic motifs against slavery in Hannah Crafts’s "The Bondwoman’s Narrative"

The Bondwoman’s Narrative is a novel that functions as a story made up from Hannah Crafts’s experiences as a bondwoman and thus merges fact and fiction giving a thoroughly new account of slavery both committed to reality and fiction. Following and taking over the Gothic literary genre that spread in Europe as a reaction toward the Romantic spirit, Crafts uses it to denounce the degrading slavery system and, mainly, to scathingly attack the patriarchal roots that stigmatize black women as the ultimate victims. It is my contention that Hannah Crafts uses the female Gothic literary devices both to attack slavery and also to stand as a proper (African) American citizen capable of relating to the cultural outlets that American culture offered aiming to counteract the derogatory stereotypes that rendered African American women at the very bottom of the social ladder.

Femme fatale: A visual/textual reading of the figuration of Justine in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria quartet

This article considers the themes that shape the female character, Justine, in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria quartet. Adopting a feminist Gothic position, I shall consider how Justine's portrayal as a femme fatale makes her a vehicle for Durrell's articulation of a misogynistic perspective throughout his tetralogy. Throughout the article, my contention will be that Durrell's deployment of certain Gothic motifs, in this instance the vampire, automaton, marionette and doll, alongside the trope of the femme fatale, fashion Justine's embodiment as a monstrous-feminine Other and the locus of masculine fears. My reading will also adopt the rather unconventional position of reading art images into Durrell's narrative, in order to become a critical interpreter of his textual-visuality.

Suburban Gothic and the Ethnic Uncanny in Jeffrey Eugenides'sThe Virgin Suicides

If uncertainty and anxiety are the troubling but potentially radical qualities of gothic narrative, suburban gothic has typically been understood in terms of a banal unhomeliness which merely confirms reassuring commonplaces about the postwar American suburbs. In such readings, the suburbs are supposed to embody a desire to stand outside history: either they are places in which people seek refuge from their own pasts, or they represent an idealized past removed from the challenges of the present. This article argues that Jeffrey Eugenides's 1993 novelThe Virgin Suicidesundermines easy assumptions about the suburbs' atemporality. The novel's various gothic motifs suggest the difficulty of abandoning European pasts in order to adopt the white American identities required for a life in the suburbs; repressed ethnic difference haunts the suburban landscape. Yet Eugenides's suburban gothic also complicates the process of remembering such acts of forgetting: the difficulty of explicating suburban pasts, the novel insists, is precisely a measure of their having become historical. The drive to present comforting, codified narratives of the suburbs is shown to be part of a move – which always fails – to disassociate the present from these sites of conflict and trauma.

Teaching the Intangible

This article argues that teaching Asian American literature should include immeasurable and nontangible factors that accompany racial grief, such as cultural betrayal, the trauma of belonging interstitially, and the sensation of displacement. I propose that these be introduced via a gothic motif, such as the double, haunting, and possession by ghosts. Such motifs have the advantage of familiarity (or, if not, are quite easy to explain) and being psychoanalytically informed.

A gothic motif in Spanish literature: monstrosity in Spanish fiction from Benito Pérez Galdós's Ángel Guerra (1891) to Javier García Sánchez's Ella, Drácula (2005)

This article reflects upon some narrative strategies and authorial choices in Spanish texts which include either physical or moral monsters or both; these are intended as case studies that may shed light on what such literary creations contribute to attitudes to monstrosity and its function in Spanish literature from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Emasculating Fear: Gothic and Gender in Caroline de la Motte Fouqué’s Der Cypressenkranz

In the wake of the Wars of Liberation, many conservative female writers, including Caroline de la Motte Fouque, addressed what they perceived as a crisis of masculinity. Fouque’s Gothic text Der Cypressenkranz (1816) can be read within the context of contemporary concerns regarding gender ambiguity. This article will explore Fouque’s use of the Gothic mode to articulate the anxiety and fear surrounding the perceived loss of masculinity. Fouque’s employment of Gothic motifs, which were well established by the time of the text’s publication, is innovative in her ability to establish and subsequently undermine genre expectations. Der Cypressenkranz therefore constitutes a unique contribution to German Gothic literature and to contemporary discussions of masculinity.