Spectral Readings

These essays explore some of the most significant current issues concerning the terrain of the Gothic perspective, offering a variety of possible answers to the crucial question: What is Gothic? The collection begins by addressing general issues about the locations and structure of Gothic; this is followed by various considerations of Gothic as a specific historical phenomenon, linked with specific aspects of British, American, and European society; and, finally, by an exploration of Gothic writing during recent decades.

Notes on the Contributors Introduction: D. Punter PART ONE: THEORY: REGIONS OF THE GOTHIC The Gothic Production of the Unconscious; F. Botting Ceremonial Gothic; D. Puntert The Nurture of the Gothic, or, How Can a Text be Both Popular and Subversive? ; W. Veeder PART TWO: HEARTLANDS: THE BRITISH NINETEENTH CENTURY Lost Cities: London's Apocalypse; A. Warwick Hell is a City: Symbolic Systems and Epistemological Scepticism in The City of Dreadful Night ; D. Seed 'A Pestilence Which Walketh in Darkness': Diagnosing the Victorian Vampire; R. Mighall PART THREE: AMERICA: STATES OF INSTABILITY American Gothic Landscapes: The New World to Vietnam; J. Idiart & J. Schulz Gothic Numbers in the New Republic: The Federalist No. 10 and its Spectral Factions; H. F. Thompson Spectres of Abjection: The Queer Subject of James's 'The Jolly Corner'; E. Savoy PART FOUR: EUROPE: DIMENSIONS OF THE BODY The Gothic and 'Otherings' of Ascendant Culture: The Original Phantom of the Opera ; J. Hogle Heiner Müller's Medea: Towards a Paradigm for the Contemporary Gothic Anatomy; B. Turner PART FIVE: (RE)VERSIONS Deaths in Venice: Daphne du Maurier's 'Don't Look Now'; A. Horner & S. Zlosnik Dr McGrath's Disease: Radical Pathology in Patrick McGrath's Neo-Gothicism; C. Ferguson Index