The Literary Gothic

The Literary Gothic is a Web guide to all things concerned with literary Gothicism, which includes ghost stories, "classic" Gothic novels and Gothic fiction (1764-1820), and related pre- and post-Gothic and supernaturalist literature written prior to the mid-C20. Its target audience is all students and fans of the Gothic, regardless of age, academic level, profession, or just about anything else.


The goals of this site are two-fold: to collect in one place all important links pertaining to the Gothic novel, Gothic fiction, and all other forms of literary Gothicism and subsequent traditions, and to make available etexts of important and overlooked early works in the tradition. These ideals will never be fully realized, of course, but that's the target. As noted above, there's an upper chronological limit of the mid-twentieth century, but the deliberately loose definition of "Gothic" (and, I suppose, of "literary") means that a wide range of material can be covered here. That too is part of the plan. As for the Anglophone bias, well, that's not really part of the plan, but a sad necessity....
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While this site began as a directory (about 2 screens of text, back in the beginning), as it has evolved into a webguide it has increasingly, and unavoidably, come to reflect my own thinking about the Gothic. This is evident not only in the selection process (far from complete and constantly under review, by the way), but perhaps primarily in the commentary and other notes which discuss the place of the author in the Gothic/post-Gothic tradition, some points of connection between various authors and/or works, and/or some elements or issues of importance in particular works. All of this reflects my own understanding of the Gothic as a popular literary tradition offering a rhetoric of imagery and tropes that authors employ and modify in order to address issues of compelling historical, psychological, and socio-cultural interest in a manner accessible to a general reading public.

Yet it remains the case that my primary intention here is not to present a particular understanding of or approach to literary supernaturalism, but to help make available resources for the enjoyment and study of Gothic literature.

I've imposed a chronological limit of approximately 1950 for a couple of reasons: in part because contemporary horror is already so extremely well-covered on the Web that my collecting such links would be quite redundant, but also because my own preference is for the older forms of Gothic and supernaturalist literature. Not that contemporary horror/Gothic is without interest, by any means, but the limited time I can devote to this site means that some focus and limitation is essential. If you're interested, here's a bit more on contemporary horror.

If you're thinking you'd like to contribute an etext to LitGothic, read this. If you want to submit an original story to LitGothic, you clearly did not read the above paragraphs very closely.

Enjoy.

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The Literary Gothic
is to be blamed on click if you dare..., a Professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, where he teaches courses on Gothic and other forms of popular literature, in addition to the usual obligations. He is also guilty of The Supernatural Sublime: The Metaphysics of Terror in Anglo-American Romanticism and is co-author (with Frederick S. Frank and Douglass H. Thomson) of Gothic Writers: A Critical and Bibliographical Guide; he is also culpable for articles on Poe, SF, cemetery iconology, and other subjects.


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The Literary Gothic