Romantic Gothic

Provides a detailed, rigorous account of the rise and development of the Gothic aesthetic in British, American and European culture between 1740 and 1840

Self-consciously breaching the critical divide between what literary history has subsequently differentiated as the ‘Gothic’ and the ‘Romantic’, this collection of 17 newly commissioned chapters seeks to draw attention to that prominent strain in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century British, American and European literature in which the distinction between the popular, low-cultural reaches of the Gothic and the ‘High’ Romantic aesthetics of more canonical figures is all but erased.

Key Features

Subjects early Gothic writing to sustained critical attention and re-examination

Situates British Gothic writing in relation to contemporary developments of the mode in America and Continental Europe

Seeks to advance current scholarly debates particularly with respect to the ongoing interest in the relationship between Romanticism and the Gothic