The History of Gothic Fiction

The History of Gothic Fiction debates the rise of the genre from its origins in the late 18th-century novel through 19th-century fictions of tyrants, monsters, conspirators and vampires to the 20th-century zombie film. Approaching key novels by Walpole ( The Castle of Otranto ), Austen ( Northanger Abbey ), Wollstonecraft ( The Wrongs of Woman ), Shelley ( Frankenstein ), Stoker ( Dracula ), and Halperin ( White Zombie ), the argument proceeds on historicist principles, analyzing the peculiar tone of these fictions. The final chapters on the vampire and the zombie examine how the undead of gothic terror are embedded in an argument from history.