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Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature Series Editors: Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley This series provides accessible yet provocative introductions to a wide range of literatures. The volumes will initiate and deepen the reader’s understanding of key literary movements, periods and genres, and consider debates that inform the past, present and future of literary study. Resources such as glossaries of key terms and details of archives and internet sites are also provided, making each volume a comprehensive critical guide.
Smith
GOTHIC LITERATURE
The book opens with a chronology and an introduction to the principal texts and key critical terms, followed by four chapters: The Gothic Heyday 1760–1820; Gothic 1820–1865; Gothic Proximities 1865–1900; and the Twentieth Century. The discussion examines how the Gothic has developed in different national contexts and in different forms, including novels, novellas, poems and films. Each chapter concludes with a close reading of a specific text – Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Dracula and The Silence of the Lambs – to illustrate the ways in which contextual discussion informs critical analysis. The book ends with a conclusion outlining possible future developments within scholarship on the Gothic. Key Features • Provides a single, comprehensive and accessible introduction to Gothic literature • Offers a coherent account of the historical development of the Gothic in a range of literary and national contexts • Introduces the ways in which critical theories of class, gender, race and national identity have been applied to Gothic texts • Includes a list of essential resources and a guide to further reading
Edinburgh Critical Guides
This introductory study provides a thorough grounding in both the history of Gothic literature and the way in which Gothic texts have been (and can be) critically read.
GOTHIC LITERATURE
Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith is Professor of English Studies at the University of Glamorgan. His nine published books include Victorian Demons (2004), Gothic Radicalism (2000), and Teaching the Gothic (edited with Anna Powell: 2006).
Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk
Edinburgh
Edinburgh Critical Guides
Andrew Smith
GOTHIC LITERATURE
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Gothic Literature
Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature Series Editors: Martin Halliwell, University of Leicester and Andy Mousley, De Montfort University Published Titles: Gothic Literature, Andrew Smith Canadian Literature, Faye Hammill Women’s Poetry, Jo Gill Contemporary American Drama, Annette J. Saddik Shakespeare, Gabriel Egan Forthcoming Titles in the Series: Asian American Literature, Bella Adams Children’s Literature, M. O. Grenby Eighteenth-Century Literature, Hamish Mathison Contemporary British Fiction, Nick Bentley Contemporary American Fiction, David Brauner Victorian Literature, David Amigoni Crime Fiction, Stacy Gillis Renaissance Literature, Siobhan Keenan Modern American Literature, Catherine Morley Scottish Literature, Gerard Carruthers Romantic Literature, Richard Marggraf Turley Modernist Literature, Rachel Potter Medieval Literature, Pamela King Women's Fiction, Sarah Sceats
Gothic Literature Andrew Smith
Edinburgh University Press
For my father, Arthur Stanley Smith
© Andrew Smith, Edinburgh University Press Ltd George Square, Edinburgh Types