Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764–1832: 33 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 33) - Hardcover

Watt, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521640997 ISBN 13: 9780521640992

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1999

Synopsis

James Watt's historically grounded account of Gothic fiction, first published in 1999, takes issue with received accounts of the genre as a stable and continuous tradition. Charting its vicissitudes from Walpole to Scott, Watt shows the Gothic to have been a heterogeneous body of fiction, characterized at times by antagonistic relations between various writers or works. Central to his argument about these works' writing and reception is a nuanced understanding of their political import: Walpole's attempt to forge an aristocratic identity, the loyalist affiliations of many neglected works of the 1790s, a reconsideration of the subversive reputation of The Monk, and the ways in which Radcliffean romance proved congenial to conservative critics. Watt concludes by looking ahead to the fluctuating critical status of Scott and the Gothic, and examines the process by which the Gothic came to be defined as a monolithic tradition, in a way that continues to exert a powerful hold.

About this title

Review

"James Watt argues that generic labels need to be re-examined, with greater attention given to the historical specificity of certain "so-called Gothic" works. This is an exciting historicist study that provides important contextual material for Gothic scholars." British and American Literatures

"...Contesting the Gothic is impressively researched, well-documented, and convincing in its claims." Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

"The exposition is lucid, the reasoning scrupulous, the tone measured and never polemical. The book can be recommended to anyone as the model of a focused and thoroughly professional investigation that carves out a niche of originality in a very crowded literary shelf." Eighteenth-Century Studies

Book Description

Charting its vicissitudes from Walpole to Scott, James Watt shows the Gothic to have been a heterogeneous body of fiction, characterized at times by antagonistic relations between writers or works. This book, first published in 1999, examines the novels' political import, and looks ahead to the fluctuating critical status of Scott and the Gothic.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521640997
• ISBN 13: 9780521640992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 220