The GOTHIC TEXT

Romantic gothic fiction is not exciting. Gothic novels are not ghost stories. Gothic novels are not women's writing. Opening with these three theses, The Gothic Text undertakes a fresh approach to a much-studied mode. Marshall Brown combines the teleological approach to literary history developed in his Preromanticism with a European perspective on the one truly international literary form of its era. New insights into literary history and the history of ideas provide a framework for innovative close readings-of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, among others-that approach classics of the genre from unusual angles. The book also provides a thoroughly researched account of German romantic psychology as it developed out of Kant's idealist philosophy into a gothic sensibility. Accessibly written and argued in careful, lively detail, The Gothic Text gives many new impulses to the study of romanticism, nineteenth-century fiction, and the origins of psychoanalysis.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents for The Gothic Text Preface A Note on Sources 1. Three Theses on Gothic Fiction 2. Fantasia: Kant and the Demons of the Night PART I: ORIGINS: WALPOLE 3. The Birth of The Castle of Otranto 4. Excursus: Notes on the History of Psycho-Narration 5. Ghosts in the Flesh PART II: KANT AND THE GOTHIC 6. At the Limits of Kantian Philosophy 7. Kant's Disciples 8. Kant and the Doctors 9. Meditative Interlude PART III: PHILSOPHY OF THE GOTHIC NOVEL 10. The Wild Ass's Skin 11. The Devil's Elixirs 12. Melmoth the Wanderer 13. Caleb Williams PART IV: CONSEQUENCES 14. In Defense of ClichA(c): Radcliffe's Landscapes 15. Frankenstein: A Child's Tale 16. Postscript: Faust and the Gothic Notes Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Marshall Brown is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. He is the author of Turning Points (Stanford, 1997) and Preromanticism (Stanford, 1991).

Review :
"Brown ... takes a fresh approach to the gothic, leading the reader gingerly and often wittily toward the true meaning of the gothic sensibility from a broad European, rather than solely British, perspective." - CHOICE "The story [Brown] tells converts the quirks and games of gothic fantasies into a dark and universal truth about the mysteries of human nature." - Studies in Romanticism "[The Gothic Text is] conveyed with such grace of style and such a range of reference here that every student of the Gothic and the Romantic and their relationship ought to take account of it from now on." - European Romantic Review "[A] highly readable and concisely coherent book." - Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts