Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Romantic gothic fiction is not exciting.
Gothic novels are not ghost stories.
Gothic novels are not women's writing.
Opening with these three theses, "The Gothic Text" undertakes a fresh approach to a much-studied mode. Marshall Brown's book combines the teleological approach to literary history developed in his "Preromanticism" with a European perspective on the one truly international literary form of its era. New insights into literary history and the history of ideas provide a framework for innovative close readings that approach classics of the genre from unusual angles. Accessibly written and argued in careful, lively detail and with extended readings of Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto", Ann Radcliffe's "The Italian", and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", among others-together with a thoroughly researched account of German romantic psychology as it developed out of Kant's idealist philosophy toward a gothic sensibility as a pioneer in the rendering of consciousness-"The Gothic Text" will give many new impulses to the study of romanticism, nineteenth-century fiction, and the origins of psychoanalysis.
About the Author
Marshall Brown is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. He is the author of "Turning Points" (Stanford, 1997) and "Preromanticism" (Stanford, 1991).
The Gothic Text,Marshall Brown,Stanford University Press,0804739129,Gothic & Romance,Gothic revival (Literature),History and criticism,Horror tales,Literary Criticism,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Reference
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