1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455084103321

Autore

Watt James

Titolo

Contesting the Gothic : fiction, genre, and cultural conflict, 1764-1832 / / James Watt [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 1999

ISBN

1-107-11611-2

0-511-00518-0

1-280-15357-1

0-511-11723-X

0-511-15011-3

0-511-31001-3

0-511-48467-4

0-511-05146-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 205 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; ; 33

Disciplina

823.087290909033

Soggetti

English fiction - 18th century - History and criticism

Horror tales, English - History and criticism

English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

Gothic fiction (Literary genre), English - History and criticism

Politics and culture - Great Britain

Literary form - History - 18th century

Literary form - History - 19th century

Romanticism - Great Britain

Gothic revival (Literature) - Great Britain

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-200) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Origins : Horace Walpole and The castle of Otranto -- Loyalist gothic romance -- Gothic 'subversion': German literature, the Minerva Press, Matthew Lewis -- The first poetess of romantic fiction: Ann Radcliffe -- The field of romance: Walter Scott, the Waverley novels, the Gothic.

Sommario/riassunto

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.