This is a wide-ranging book about aspects of the Gothic, from classic texts such as Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights to contemporary fiction by Iain Banks, William Gibson and many others. It approaches the texts through looking at the opposition between the Gothic and the law, suggesting ways in which Gothic at all points produces transgression. It looks at horror fiction by, for example, Stephen King and Robert Bloch, as well as stories from China and Hong Kong, and suggests new ways in which contemporary literary and psychological theory might relate to and address the Gothic.

This volume offers a comprehensive account of modern literary criticism, presenting the field as part of an ongoing historical and intellectual tradition. Featuring thirty-nine specially commissioned chapters from an international team of esteemed contributors, it fills a large gap in the market by combining the accessibility of single-authored selections with a wide range of critical perspectives. The volume is divided into four parts. Part One covers the key philosophical and aesthetic origins of literary theory, while Part Two discusses the foundational movements and thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century. Part Three offers introductory overviews of the most important movements and thinkers in modern literary theory, and Part Four looks at emergent trends and future directions.

This book uses clinical psychoanalytic theory to illustrate how early British Gothic fiction reveals undercurrents of psychopathological behavior. It demonstrates that psychological insights gained from Gothic romance anticipate the later scientific findings of psychoanalysis. Chapters consider the division of the Gothic novel's critical reception between allegory and romance; how the structure of early British Gothic romance parallels Freud's notion of the uncanny; the genre's perverse origins in Walpole's The Castle of Otranto; sexual differentiation and the parallel between development of Gothic romance an development of the psyche; Ann Radcliffe and the terror of hysteria; Matthew Lewis and obsessional neurosis; and the confusion between self and other in Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

From 1830 to 1870 advertising brought in its wake a new understanding of how the subject read and how language operated. Sara Thornton presents a crucial moment in print culture, the early recognition of what we now call a 'virtual' world, and proposes new readings of key texts by Dickens and Balzac.

The Gothic began as a designation for barbarian tribes, was associated with the cathedrals of the High Middle Ages, was used to describe a marginalized literature in the late eighteenth century, and continues today in a variety of forms (literature, film, graphic novel, video games, and other narrative and artistic forms). Unlike other recent books in the field that focus on certain aspects of the Gothic, this work directs researchers to seminal and significant resources on all of its aspects. Annotations will help researchers determine what materials best suit their needs. A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English covers Gothic cultural artifacts such as literature, film, graphic novels, and videogames. This authoritative guide equips researchers with valuable recent information about noteworthy resources that they can use to study the Gothic effectively and thoroughly.

The texts in this unique collection range from the Gothic Revival of the late eighteenth century through to the late Victorian gothic, and from the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge to the short fiction of H.G. Wells and Henry James. Genres represented include medievalist poetry, psychological thrillers, dark political dystopias, sinister tales of social corruption, and popular ghost tales. In addition to a wide selection of classic and lesser-known texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Gothic Evolutions includes key examples of the aesthetic, scientific, and cultural theory related to the Gothic, from John Locke and David Hume to Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva.