ABSTRACT

From early examples of queer representation in mainstream media to present-day dissolutions of the human-nature boundary, the Gothic is always concerned with delineating and transgressing the norms that regulate society and speak to our collective fears and anxieties.

This volume examines British and American Gothic texts from four centuries and diverse media – including novels, films, podcasts, and games – in case studies which outline the central relationship between the Gothic and transgression, particularly gender(ed) and sexual transgression. This relationship is both crucial and constantly shifting, ever in the process of renegotiation, as transgression defines the Gothic and society redefines transgression. The case studies draw on a combination of well-studied and under-studied texts in order to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of transgression in the Gothic.

Pointing the way forward in Gothic Studies, this original and nuanced combination of gendered, Ecogothic, queer, and media critical approaches addresses established and new scholars of the Gothic alike.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

Gothic and Transgression

part I|83 pages

Gothic in the Long Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

chapter 1|13 pages

Excessive Fainting and Parodic Bending

Analysing Socio-Political Criticism Through the Heroine's Body in the Gothic Novel and the Gothic Parody

chapter 3|15 pages

Gothic Monster or Creative Muse?

Strategies of Empowerment in Grace King's “One of Us”

chapter 4|16 pages

From Gothic Heroines to Monstrous Prom Queens

Gender Horror in Dracula and Jennifer's Body

chapter 5|15 pages

Violet Strange

Gothic Girl Detective

part II|149 pages

Gothic from the World Wars to the Present

chapter 6|16 pages

“I Don't Want to Grow Up”

Abject Adolescence and Southern Gothic in Carson McCullers's Short Stories

chapter 8|18 pages

‘Annihilation’ of the Gendered Human

Ecogothic Transgressions of Anthropocentrism

chapter 9|16 pages

Transgressing Genre and Gender

Masculinities and (Post) Feminism in Neo-Gothic Narratives

chapter 11|17 pages

Archive of the Unspeakable

Unsilencing Violence in Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House

chapter 13|18 pages

The Wholesome Queer Gothic

Transgressing Narrative Norms and Shifting LGBTQIA+ Representation in Contemporary Re-Inventions of the Gothic

chapter |4 pages

Conclusion

Gothic Prospects – Ancient Monsters and New Anxieties