A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction
Mapping History's Nightmares
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:20th Mar '03
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£63.00(9780198184720)
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 siècle. 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.
judiciously and convincingly using different discursive contexts to shed light on the heritage from the Gothic of Victorian fiction. * Victor Sage *
always remains genuinely challenging * Victor Sage *
this book is a serious and well-documented contribution to the study of the Gothic mode, which sheds some fascinating light on what currently remains a really problematic area for the scholar; namely, the mysterious transition from the popular gene of the literary histories (1764-1820) to the survival and diffusion of the mode in Victorian texts ... It is Mighall's sharpness and detail which makes the book's anti-essentialism a real contribution to the history of the Gothic in the nineteenth century. * Victor Sage *
He ... provides an excellent demonstration of the gothic foundations of detective fiction. Mighall's command of the primary and secondary literature makes for illuminating readings of many contributors to Victorian fiction, both great and small. * B. F. Fisher, Choice, Sept. 00. *
'an important and robustly argumentative definition of the Gothic. ... [It] redraws the critical map'. * John Sutherland, Independent on Sunday 29/11/99 *
... 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 * Michael Newton, THES *
ISBN: 9780199262182
Dimensions: 217mm x 139mm x 18mm
Weight: 407g
340 pages