The Failure of Gothic

Abstract

This book is an examination of narrative conventions in one of the most popular and controversial of the 18th-century English literary genres. The vogue of the Gothic in the latter decades of the 18th century, its treatment by important critics such as Coleridge, and its distinctiveness as a genre, makes its study central to an understanding of 18th-century culture, of literary genre and popular literature, and of the problems surrounding attempts to judge quality in a literary work. The English Gothic novel, moreover, has attracted renewed attention from modern critics, who have argued its importance in mirroring the late 18th century's discomfort with the political, psychological, and sexual climate of the times. This book challenges such views, suggesting that the instability of the form may be more successfully addressed through a study of generic structure and the relationship of the Gothic to the designs of the fictional works that preceded it.

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