Bøger i Anthem Studies in Gothic Literature serien

The gothic is a dark mirror of the fears and taboos of a culture. This collection brings together a dozen chilling tales of the nineteenth-century American South with non-fiction texts that illuminate them and ground them in their historical context. The tales are from writers with enduring, world-wide reputations (Edgar Allan Poe), and others whose work will be unknown to most readers. Indeed, one of the stories has not been reprinted for nearly a hundred years, and little is known about its author, E. Levi Brown.Similarly, the historical selections are from a range of authors, some canonical, others not, ranging from Thomas Jefferson and the great historian and sociologist W. E. B. DuBois to the relatively obscure Leona Sansay. Some of these readings are themselves as disturbingly gothic as any of the tales. Indeed, the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are tenuous in the gothic South. It is our contention that southern gothic fiction is in many ways realistic fiction, and, even at its most grotesque and haunting, is closely linked to the realities of southern life.In America, and in the American South especially, the great fears, taboos, and boundaries often concern race. Even in stories where black people are not present, as in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The System of Professor Tarr and Dr. Fether," slavery hangs in the background as a ghostly metaphor. Our background readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner's rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.

The Cultural Construction of Monstrous Children raises important questions at the heart of society and culture, and through an interdisciplinary, trans-cultural analysis, presents important findings on socio-cultural representations and embodiments of the child and childhood. At the start of the 21st century, new anxieties constellate around the child and childhood, while older concerns have re-emerged, mutated, and grown stronger. But as historical analysis shows, they have been ever-present concerns. This innovative and interdisciplinary collection of essays considers examples of monstrous children since the 16th century to the present, spanning real-life and popular culture. to exhibit the manifestation of the Western cultural anxiety around the problematic, anomalous child as naughty, dangerous, or just plain evil.The linkage between children and horror, or horror-full children, would seem an almost natural connection to make given its popularity in contemporary horror films and novels. However, the intersection between the two categories has a long history going back beyond the more obvious Gothic reimaginings of the 19th century with its under-age ghostly terrors revealing that the idea of the 'little horror' is seemingly an inherent demarcation within society between adults and those that are viewed as 'not adults'.However, as seen in this timely and innovative collection, the anomalous child can also be seen in a positive light, and that resistance to easy categorization can be embraced by wider society as a force for change as can be seen in the recent example of a problematic child/adolescence, Greta Thunberg, a singularly focused individual, who is 16 years-old at the time of writing, has consistently refused to act as desired by the adult society around her in pursuit of gaining recognition of the urgent need for action in regard to environmental change. The book takes an inter- and multidisciplinary approach, drawing upon fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, film, and literature, to study the role of the child and childhood within contemporary Western culture and to see the ways in which each discipline intersects and influences the other, as well as viewing all this through a historical lens.

'Neo-Gothic Narratives' defines and theorises what mobilises the employment of the Gothic to speak to our own times.

Originally published in 1860, the formative Gothic novel by Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835¿1921), one of nineteenth-century Americäs most significant woman writers, relates the tale of a tormented British aristocrat who struggles to retain his sanity while suffering horrifying visitations from the spectre of his dead lover amid the agonies of an already fragile mind.

The gothic is a dark mirror of the fears and taboos of a culture. This collection brings together a dozen chilling tales of the nineteenth-century American South with non-fiction texts that illuminate them and ground them in their historical context. The tales are from writers with enduring, world-wide reputations (Edgar Allan Poe), and others whose work will be unknown to most readers. Indeed, one of the stories has not been reprinted for nearly a hundred years, and little is known about its author, E. Levi Brown.Similarly, the historical selections are from a range of authors, some canonical, others not, ranging from Thomas Jefferson and the great historian and sociologist W. E. B. DuBois to the relatively obscure Leona Sansay. Some of these readings are themselves as disturbingly gothic as any of the tales. Indeed, the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are tenuous in the gothic South. It is our contention that southern gothic fiction is in many ways realistic fiction, and, even at its most grotesque and haunting, is closely linked to the realities of southern life.In America, and in the American South especially, the great fears, taboos, and boundaries often concern race. Even in stories where black people are not present, as in Poe''s "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The System of Professor Tarr and Dr. Fether," slavery hangs in the background as a ghostly metaphor. Our background readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner''s rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.The twelve Gothic tales of this collection span the nineteenth-century South and are from some of the most famous writers of the age, such as Edgar Allan Poe, to more recently rediscovered and now celebrated writers such as Kate Chopin and Charles Chesnutt, to the completely and unfairly obscure E. Levi Brown. Companion readings-some themselves quite chilling-are by celebrated writers and well-known historical figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, Charles Brockden Brown, Jacques Dessalines, and W. E. B DuBois. These readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner''s rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.

¿Neo-Gothic Narratives¿ defines and theorises what mobilises the employment of the Gothic to speak to our own times.

California has always represented new beginnings and opportunities in a golden land. In constructing the California Dream, much has been omitted or repressed. This study explores the dark side of the dream, as revealed in the state's rich tradition of Gothic literature and film.

Theology in the Early British and Irish Gothic, 1764-1832 reassesses the relationship between contemporary theology and the Gothic. Investigating Gothic aesthetics, depictions of the supernatural and portrayals of religious organisations, it explores how the Gothic engages with contemporary theologies, both Dissenting and Anglican.

The Colombian Gothic in Cinema and Literature traces the aesthetic and political development of the Gothic genre in Colombia. Drawing on works like Jose Asuncion Silva's poetic "e;Nocturnos,"e; Caliwood's films and Mario Mendoza's novels, Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodriguez shows how Gothic tropes appear in the works of Colombian writers and filmmakers. However, he argues that what results ultimately is not just the Gothic in Colombia, but rather the Colombian Gothic-a new form of the genre with its own agenda and aesthetics.To identify a form of the Gothic as "e;Colombian"e; is, in one sense, to demonstrate how thinkers from that nation have reconfigured and laid claim to tropes often regarded as the purview of Europe and the US. The Colombian Gothic pays homage to but also pokes fun at the Gothic of figures like Poe, Bronte, Hawthorne and Stoker. In the hands of Colombian writers and filmmakers, Gothic tropes are taken to their extremes to reflect particularly Colombian issues, like the ongoing armed conflict in the country since the 1950s as various left wing guerillas, government factions and paramilitary groups escalated violence. In this Colombian Gothic, traditional tropes like distorted familial relations appear as open fratricide and incest. Such transformations address the real-life horrors of violence wrought within the supposed protections of shared nationality.In another sense, the Colombian Gothic does not just define itself apart from the US and European Gothics-it also challenges the centrality of Bogota-centered perspectives of Colombian politics and conflict. By the 1970s and 1980s, cities such as Cali suffered particularly extreme levels of violence, when the war among the drug cartels added another layer to the already complicated conflict. At the same time, Cali had one of the strongest filmmaking traditions in the country. The "e;Cali group"e; of writers and filmmakers seized the Gothic to challenge not just Europe and the US as the centers of the genre, but also to challenge Bogot as the center of the country-and as the most "e;logical"e; place to set a Gothic narrative with its colder, gloomier, darker urban ambience. The Colombian Gothic of Cali addresses the topics of conflict, but within an unapologetically tropical setting that reflects the hotter climate in the region surrounding Cali. The effort of these Cali-based writers and filmmakers became so dominant in shaping the Colombian Gothic that the twenty-first-century Colombian Gothic-now mainly composed in Bogot-follows the lead of these creators, continuing to create a Gothic that uniquely reflects the aesthetics and politics of Colombia.

The Gothic Literature and History of New England surveys the history, nature and future of the Gothic mode in the region, from the witch trials through the Black Lives Matter Movement. Three main areas of its focus are women's representation as writers and consumers of Gothic literature, the Puritans' fear of the wilderness and treatment of the native peoples, and the legacy of slavery and enduring racism. Texts include Cotton Mather and other Puritan divines who collected folklore of the supernatural; the Frontier Gothic of Indian captivity narratives; the canonical authors of the American Renaissance such as Melville and Hawthorne; the women's ghost story tradition and the Domestic Gothic from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Shirley Jackson; Stephen King and the horror boom of the twentieth century; and writers of the current generation who respond to the racial and gender issues in the work of H. P. Lovecraft, the Providence writer whose stories once defined New England's Gothic heritage. The Gothic Literature and History of New England brings to the surface the religious intolerance, racism and misogyny inherent in the New England Gothic, and how these nightmares continue to haunt literature and popular culture-tourism, films, television, games, the visual arts and more.This is a high-interest work designed for scholars of the Gothic mode who may not be familiar with more recent developments in fiction and film as well as for advanced undergraduate and graduate students searching for a compact introduction to this area of the American Gothic. It will provide an overview of criticism, a timeline of historical events and literary texts, and suggestions for further reading. The approach relies on open-ended questions that may help instructors "e;teach the conflicts"e; around race, gender, class and the aesthetics of the Gothic.

Gothic has often articulated fear as much through its depictions of weather, climate and landscape as it has through its typical monsters, and the relationship between geography, the environment and travel has been a persistent characteristic of the Gothic from its earliest moments. Gothic is an innately travelling mode of writing, and the literary fascination provoked by armchair travel is central to the navigation of cultural fears: 'strangeness' only becomes apparent once one exchanges the homely (Heimlich) for the uncanny in new or uncharted settings. This book will argue that what differentiates Gothic travel from all other kinds is the growing realisation that the terrain across which one journeys has become 'haunted' by what one finds there. At the same time, that encounter similarly transforms the traveller 'for good': whatever ghosts we encounter abroad follow us home and take root in our collective consciousness. This book therefore argues that Gothic literary travel plays a key role in giving expression to a range of very 'real' haunting anxieties. The strange and discomforting landscapes into which our reading propels us allow those anxieties to take form while, in turn, our experience of journeying through these landscapes enables us, in part, to confront the fears they provoke. This book argues that the process and experience of travel in Gothic literature provides a unique perspective on recurring cultural preoccupations from the late-eighteenth century onward, ranging from concerns about climate change or the presence of the unseen to the negotiation of cultural difference and the apprehensions produced by various modes of modern transport. The book follows travellers who take many fictional forms - tourists, commuters, walkers, explorers, as well as the 'armchair' tourist or reader - as they encounter fascinating, curious and often disquieting weathers, climates, landscapes and topographies. Gothic travel epitomises the wonder, excitement, suspicion or incomprehension that arises from journeys through familiar and unfamiliar terrain. While exposure to the wild, elemental or primitive could produce the elevation of the sublime in early Gothic, increasingly the experience of travel raised unsettling questions about people and environments that lay beyond established frames of knowledge. Gothic travellers are haunted, never alone, and the experience of journeying through these landscapes provokes fears that may shadow them even after they have returned to home ground.One of the reasons why Gothic literature remains as popular in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as it has ever been, despite our lessening belief in the supernatural or the after-life, is because it continues to provide us with a mechanism for giving shape to otherwise formless but profound cultural concerns. The book questions, however, whether Gothic literature per se remains a source of fear (as it arguably was in its earliest phases), or whether it now provides a 'homeopathic' response to growing social, cultural and environmental anxieties which loom large in our consciousness. It tracks the ways in which Gothic literature, from the later eighteenth century to the present, has always propelled fictional travellers abroad into cultural landscapes which prove terrifying and unknowable, but also questions whether more recent literary portrayals ask different questions of their readers in relation to the environment, surveillance, (im)migration, the foreign and technological innovation, as viewed through the lens of travel. As this study will show, these expressions of fear speak loudly to our own time, and are manifested not only in contemporary Gothic literature but in the wider cultural discourse.