Summary
Gothic literature covers a range of books and authors much wider than most people realize. From the origins of the movement in the 18th century to Charles Dickens to contemporary writers such as Stephen King, this A-to-Z guide to Gothic literature covers a vast array of works and writers from Britain, America, and other countries, as well as a variety of genres—novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and even a few influential films and works of art. The extensive Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature thoroughly examines this increasingly popular topic.
Selected authors include Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Truman Capote, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Dickens, Isak Dinesen, Daphne du Maurier, William Godwin, John Keats, Iris Murdoch, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Saki, Sir Walter Scott, Bram Stoker, Horace Walpole, H.G. Wells, Eudora Welty, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Titles include Absalom! Absalom!, Bleak House, Crimes of the Heart, "The Eve of St. Agnes," Frankenstein, Interview with the Vampire, The Island of Dr. Moreau, "Kubla Khan," "The Masque of the Red Death," The Monk, Rebecca, The Shining, The Turn of the Screw, and Wuthering Heights.
Among the concepts, themes, and literary terms covered are Byronic hero, danse macabre, dreams and nightmares, feminist themes, Gothic revival, graveyard verse, occultism, romanticism, sadism, somnambulism, and Southern Gothic.
Highlights include:
- The emergence of Gothic writers in the late 18th century, with the works of Tobias Smollett and Ann Radcliffe
- The movement's height in the 19th century, including Dracula and the works of Mary Shelley and the Brontë sisters
- Contemporary Gothic writers, such as Anne Rice and Stephen King
- Concepts and literary terms, such as claustrophobia, the Doppleganger motif, and melodrama
- Famous settings, such as Castle Dracula, the House of Seven Gables, and Frankenstein's laboratory.
Specifications
Index. Appendix. Bibliography. Cross-references. Chronology. Filmography.
About the Author(s)
Mary Ellen Snodgrass is the author of numerous award-winning reference works, including Encyclopedia of Fable, Encyclopedia of World Scriptures, Encyclopedia of Satirical Literature, Encyclopedia of Utopian Literature, and Facts On File's Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature.