Description
Book SynopsisThe Gothic has long been seen as offering a subversive challenge to the norms of realism. Locating both Gothic and mainstream Victorian fiction in a larger literary and cultural field, Peter K. Garrett argues that the oppositions usually posed between...
Trade ReviewApproaching literary gothicism with an emphasis on its reflexivity, Garrett offers interesting interpretations of old warhorse fictions by writers from Horace Walpole through Henry James.... Overall, Garrett highlights the psychological plausibilities inherent in gothicism, which bear out Poe's dictum that terror emanates from the soul rather than from sleazy gimmicks to enthrall imperceptive readers. Summing Up: All collections supporting serious study of literary Gothicism, upper-division undergraduates and above.
* Choice *
Gothic Reflections demonstrates the interplay of Gothic and realistic elements from Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) to James's The Ambassadors. Everyone who studies nineteenth-century fiction as well as recent theories of narrative will find it helpful, at times provocative (forceful but not forced), and always engaging.
-- Patrick Brantlinger, Indiana University * Victorian Studies *
