Robert Miles 
Gothic writing 1750–1820 [PDF ebook] 
A genealogy

Now available again in paperback, this provocative study by Robert Miles uses the tools of modern literary theory and criticism to analyse this very distinctive body of texts. Miles introduces the reader to contexts of Gothic in the eigteenth century including its historical development and its placement within the period’s concerns with discourse and gender.

By using texts ranging from sensational novels such as The Monk and The Mysteries of Udolpho, poetic variations on Gothic by Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, to satirical works on the theme by Jane Austen, Miles presents an intriguing overview of Gothic literature. By drawing extensively on the ideas of Michel Foucault to establish a genealogy he brings Gothic writing in from the margins of ‘popular fiction’, resituating it at the centre of debate about Romanticism.

Table of Content

Introduction: What is Gothic?
1. Historicizing the Gothic
2. The Gothic as discourse
3. The hygienic self: gender in the Gothic
4. Narratives of nurture
5. Narratives of descent
6. Radcliffe and interiority: towards the making of The Mysteries of Udolpho
7. Horrid shadows: the Gothic in Northanger Abbey
8. Avatars of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk: Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian and Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya: Or, The Moor
9. The poetic tale of terror: Christabel, The Eve of St Agnes and Lamia
Conclusion: Lees Kruitzner and Byrons Werner
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Robert Miles is a Reader in English at Sheffield Hallam University