The essays in this volume reinterpret and contest the Gothic cultural inheritance, each from a specifically twenty-first century perspective. Most are based on papers delivered at a conference held, appropriately, in Horace Walpoleʼs Gothic mansion at Strawberry Hill in West London, which is usually seen as the geographical origin of the first, but not the last, of the many Gothic revivals of the past 300 years. In a contemporary context, the Gothic sensibility could be seen as a mode particularly applicable to the frightening instability of the world in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The truth is probably less epochal: that Gothic never went away (when were we ever without fear?), or at least has persisted since its resurgence in the late nineteenth century. Gothic is at least as modern as it is ancient, and each essay in this collection contributes to current scholarship on the Gothic by exploring a particular aspect of Gothic’s contemporaneity. The volume contains papers on horror novels and cinema, poetry, popular music and fan cultures.

Selected by a poll of more than 180 Gothic specialists (creative writers, professors, critics, and Gothic Studies program developers at universities), the fifty-three original works discussed in 21st-Century Gothic represent the most impressive Gothic novels written around the world between 2000-2010. The essays in this volume discuss the merits of these novels, highlighting the influences and key components that make them worthy of inclusion. Many of the pioneer voices of Gothic Studies, as well as other key critics of the field, have all contributed new essays to this volume, including David Punter, Jerrold Hogle, Karen F. Stein, Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Tony Magistrale, Don D'Ammassa, Mavis Haut, Walter Rankin, James Doig, Laurence A. Rickels, Douglass H. Thomson, Sue Zlosnik, Carol Margaret Davision, Ruth Bienstock Anolik, Glennis Byron, Judith Wilt, Bernice Murphy, Darrell Schweitzer, and June Pulliam. The guide includes a preface by one of the world's leading authorities on the weird and fantastic, S. T. Joshi. Sharing their knowledge of how traditional Gothic elements and tensions surface in a changed way within a contemporary novel, the contributors enhance the reader's dark enjoyment, emotional involvement, and appreciation of these works. These essays show not only how each of these novels are Gothic but also how they advance or change Gothicism, making the works both irresistible for readers and establishing their place in the Gothic canon.

This resource in contemporary Gothic literature, film and television takes a thematic approach, providing insights into the many forms the Gothic has taken in the twenty-first century.

This book brings together a carefully selected range of contemporary disciplinary approaches to new areas of Gothic inquiry. Moving beyond the representational and historically based aspects of literature and film that have dominated Gothic studies, this volume both acknowledges the contemporary diversification of Gothic scholarship and maps its changing and mutating incarnations. Drawing strength from their fascinating diversity, and points of correlation, the varied perspectives and subject areas cohere around a number of core themes — of re-evaluation, discovery, and convergence — to reveal emerging trends and new directions in Gothic scholarship. Visiting fascinating areas including the Gothic and digital realities, uncanny food experiences, representations of death and the public media, Gothic creatures and their popular legacies, new approaches to contemporary Gothic literature, and re-evaluations of the Gothic mode through regional narratives, essays reveal many patterns and intersecting approaches, forcefully testifying to the multifaceted, although lucidly coherent, nature of Gothic studies in the 21st Century. The multiple disciplines represented — from digital inquiry to food studies, from fine art to dramaturgy — engage with the Gothic in order to offer new definitions and methodological approaches to Gothic scholarship. The interdisciplinary, transnational focus of this volume provides exciting new insights into, and expanded and revitalised definitions of, the Gothic and its related fields.

Brings Ben Jonson to the twenty-first century by reading Volpone through psychoanalysis, poststructuralism and Marxism

This is the latest in Mick Mercer's reports on the international Goth scene. In 21st Century Goth, Mercer has broadened his reporting beyond America, Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Canada, and Australia to include the current scene in Japan and other parts of Asia, as well as South America. In this, his third Goth bible, Mercer looks at the bands, clothes, clubs, people, sites, fanzines, and web rings, as well as the changing atmosphere. If you're new to the Goth world, start here. If you've been here before, 21st Century Goth is the update you've been waiting for.

The first volume to provide an interdisciplinary, comprehensive history of twentieth and twenty-first century Gothic culture.