Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to explore the previously uncharted territories of Gothic scholarship. It explores how the Gothic, as an effective aesthetic mode and a political tool, can be used to subvert accepted notions of gender representation and social roles in territories as distant as Poland, Albania, India, and England. The book offers new insights into both the old and the new in cinema by demonstrating how well-known Gothic tropes and routines, such as exploration of Otherness, traversing unknown topographies, can offer new critical vistas. It examines how the putatively safe territories of childhood have always encompassed uncannily disturbing ground, and explores the darker, sinister, and serious aspects of stories, films, and merchandise aimed, not exclusively, at children. The book focuses on different categories of buildings, museums, factories, and houses to see them all turned into Gothic territories.