Gothic: Culture, subculture, counterculture · Gothic: Culture, subculture, counterculture ConferenceProgramme! (Please’see’from’p.7’onwards’for’abstracts’and’participants’’contactdetails)’

Gothic: Culture, subculture, counterculture Conference Programme

(Please see from p.7 onwards for abstracts and participants’ contact details)

Key to rooms: AR= Anteroom RR= Round Room WDR = Waldegrave Drawing Room SCR = Senior Combination Room BR = Billiard Room/D121

Day 1: Friday, 8 March 9.00 Coffee, Danish Pastries and Introductions (AR) 9.30-‐10.45: Parallel Session 1 Panel 1A (WDR): Gothic and Genre Fiction: Ghosts and Crime (Chair: Brian Ridgers) Marta Nowicka, ‘Gothic Ghosts from Horace Walpole to Muriel Spark’ Victoria Margree, ‘(Other) Wordly Goods: Gothic Inheritances in the Ghost Stories of

Charlotte Riddell’ Andalee Motrenec, ‘Gothic Elements and Crime Fiction in Dracula and Frankenstein’ Panel 1B (BR): Southern European Gothic Architecture (Chair: Peter Howell) Graça P. Corrêa, ‘Gothic Spatial Theory and Aesthetics: The Ecocentric Conjoining of

Underworld and Otherworld in Regaleira (Sintra, Portugal)’ Viviane Delpech, ‘The château d’Abbadia in Hendaye (France) : Antoine d’Abbadie’s

romantic and political utopia’ Giulio Girondi, ‘Gothic Heritage in Renaissance Mantova’ Panel 1C (SCR): Gothic in Contemporary Fiction (Chair: Fred Botting) Andrew Teverson, ‘Blood Relations: Salman Rushdie and Anish Kapoor’s Gothic Nights’ Nadia van der Westhuizen, ‘Happily Ever Aftermath: Fairy Tales in Contemporary Gothic

Fiction and Television’ Martin Dines, ‘American Suburban Gothic’ Panel 1D (RR): Horace Walpole and the Cultures of the Eighteenth Century (Chair:

Fiona Robertson) Hsin Hsuan (Cynthia) Lin, ‘The Castle of Otranto and Strawberry Hill House: the Curious

Cases’ Jonanthan Dent, ‘History’s Other: Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and David Hume’s The

History of England’ Zara Naghizadeh, ‘Horace Walpole’s ”Guardianship of Embryos and Cockleshells”’

Gothic: Culture, Subculture, CounterCulture

An interdisciplinary Conference, 8-9 March 2013 www.smuc.ac.uk/gothic – Twitter: @StrawHillGothic – FB Group: ‘Gothic: Culture, Subculture, Counterculture’

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10.45 Refreshments (AR) 11.00 Plenary 1 (WDR): Avril Horner, ‘Walpole, the Gothic, and Surrealism’. 12.15-‐1.30 Parallel Sessions 2

Panel 2A (WDR): The French Revolution and its Legacies (I) (Chair: Cian Duffy) Christine Mangan, ‘Haunting the Text: The Femme Covert in Eliza Parsons’ The Castle of

Wolfenbach’ Lucy Linforth, ‘Scott and Lewis: Radical Conservatives, or Conservative Radicals?’ Catherine Gadsby-‐Mace, ‘”God! ‘Tis the Bleeding Nun!”: The Dire Consequences of Female

Sexuality’ Panel 2B (BR): Gothic Vampires in World Contexts (Chair: Fred Botting) Gabriel Eljaiek-‐Rodríguez, ‘Bela Lugosi isn’t Dead…He’s Just Vacationing in the Caribbean’ Cristina Pérez Arranz, ‘The Vampire as a Femme Fatale: A comparison between American

and Romanian literature’ Panel 2C (SCR): Theorising the Gothic: Enlightenment, Modernity, Progress

(Chair: Jon Hackett) Rolf P. Lessenich, ‘Gothic Narratives, the Exploration of the Unconscious Before Freud, and

the Subversion of Progressivist Orthodoxy’ Mujadad Zaman, ‘The Revolution will not be replicated: The Gothic Revival the 21st Century’ Bill Hughes, ‘”Two kinds of romance”: Generic Hybridity and Epistemological Uncertainty in

Contemporary Paranormal Romance’ Panel 2D (RR): Gothic, Fairy Tale and Romance (Chair: Brian Ridgers) Manuela Adrigan, ‘The World of Gothic Romance: Between Paternal Lovers and Haunting

Mothers, or, Who the F*ck is Oedipus? Brittany Warman, ‘Awakening the Darkness: Towards a Poetics of Gothic Fairy Tales’ Marla Arbach, ‘Gothic Disruptions of Fantasy Conventions in Once Upon a Time’ 1.30 Lunch (AR) 2.30 Parallel Sessions 3

Panel 3A (WDR): TV Gothic, Now: True Blood and The Walking Dead (Chair: Maria Mellins)

Johan Höglund, ‘”Please Kill Me”: Euthanasia and the Imperial Gothic’ Derek Johnston, ‘Eruptions of the Abnormal: Gothic/Horror Episodes of Mainstream

Television Series and Dominance of Rational Worldviews’ Dorota Babilas, ‘True Blood: Consuming Vampires in Liquid Modernity’ Joanna Babicka, ‘Hyper-‐Gothicism: Postmodern Gothic Intertextuality in True Blood’



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Panel 3B (BR): Contemporary Gothic Subcultures (I): Crime, Dress, Sex (Chair: Jon Hackett)

David McWilliam, ‘Sagacious Scapegoat: Marilyn Manson’s Subversion of the Moral Panic Surrounding the Columbine High School Massacre’

Kristen Sollee, ‘Cloak and Swagger: Gothic Drag in 21st-‐Century Pop and Hip Hop’ Christine Vial-‐Kayser, ‘The Gothic flavour of the Chapman brothers’ Panel 3C (SCR): Adapting Gothic Texts Across Media (Chair: Richard Mills) Andrew Small, ‘Gothic and Surrealism: Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970) Doreen Bauschke, ‘Haunted Bodies as “Gothic Desire”: Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl’ Steve Gerrard, ‘Film Adaptations of H P Lovecraft: “The World is indeed comic; but the joke

is on Mankind”’ Justin Everett, ‘Cosmic Gothic: Spatial Anxiety and Cosmic Horror in Weird Tales, 1924-‐40’ Panel 3D (RR): The French Revolution and its Legacies (II) (Chair: Cian Duffy) Imke Heuer, ‘”Prejudice and Principle crumbled at once to dust”: Harriet Lee’s Revolutionary

Appropriation of Radcliffian Gothic’ Eva Čoupková, ‘”Vile treachery in my castle”: Subversion of Patriarchal Castle in Early Gothic

Plays The Kentish Barons and The Ward of the Castle’ Sarah Winter, ‘Gothic Drama and Melodrama: From Revolutionary Anarchy to the Single

Enemy of Napoleon’ Maureen McCue, ‘Prints and Profits: Samuel Rogers’ Italy and its Gothic Tales 4.30 Tea 5.00 Plenary 2: Michael Snodin, ‘The Castle of Otranto’ and the Topography of

Strawberry Hill’ 6.00 Tours of Strawberry Hill House, Drinks (Café, Ground Floor of Strawberry Hill

House) 8.00 Dinner (Walpole’s Gallery)



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Day 2: Saturday, 9 March 9.00 Coffee, Danish Pastries and Aspirin! (AR) 9.30-‐10.45: Parallel Sessions 4

Panel 4A (WDR): The Initiation of the Gothic Dialogue in the Eighteenth Century (Chair: Cian Duffy) Ashleigh Pyke, Paving the road for men of brighter talents: The Initiation of the Gothic

Dialogue’ Serena Trowbridge, ‘”By the blue taper’s trembling light”: Graveyard poetry and the Gothic’ Ronja Vieth, ‘The Irony of Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto’ Panel 4B (BR): Gothic and Industrial Spectres in Writing, Music and Steampunk (Chair: Michael Goddard) Michael Goddard, ‘Sonic Hauntologies in Industrial Musics’ Patricia MacCormack, ‘The Nephilim and the Necronomic’ Shannon Rollins, ‘Recalibrating the Past: the Multi-‐millenial Ramifications of Steampunk’ Panel 4C (SCR): Topography and Capitalism in Contemporary Gothic Fiction Rebbecca Duncan, ‘”Someone’s always buying”: Murder, Magic and Millenial Capitalism in

Zoo City’ Frances Tomlin, ‘”Where the bones of the Earth show through”: Fiction and Scotland’s

Gothic Wilderness’ Andrew Seeger, ‘The Gothic in the Contemporary Fiction of Mark Z. Danielewski and Carlos

Ruiz Zafón’ Panel 4D (RR): Gothic and Children Susan Ash, ‘Gothic Tropes, Monstrous Mothers, and Dr. Barnardo’s Promotional Vignettes’ Rebecca Styler, ‘The Gothic Child as Existentialist Symbol: The Counterpoint to Romantic

Innocence’ Agata Zarzycka, ‘Seeing the Systematic Monster: Gothic Auto-‐Referentiality as Means of

Reconceptualising Discourse in Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’

10.45 Refreshments 11.00 Plenary 3 (WDR): John Bowen, ‘The Devil and his Dummy’ 12.15-‐1.30: Parallel Sessions 5

Panel 5A (WDR): Vampires Brittney Ostlie, ‘A History almost at Variance with the Possibilities of Later Day Belief: The

Catholic Revival in Dracula’ Sara Cleto, ‘”I live in you; and you live in me”: Transgressive Love and the Gothic Vampire’



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Judith Rahn, ‘From Hideous Monstrosity to Glittering Beauty: the changing perception of the body of the vampire from the 19th to the 21st centuries’

Panel 5B (BR): Gothic Bodies: Hybridity and Decomposition (Chair: Allyson Purcell-‐Davis)

Laura Kremmel, ‘Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die: Romantic Decompositions in the Works of Lewis and Dacre’

Anna B. Creagh, ‘Gothic Influences of Zombie-‐Lore’ Panel 5C (SCR): Stephen King (Chair: Russell Schechter) Amber Larner, ‘”A Nation under Siege from Within”: Stephen King’s Gothic Landscape as

Post-‐Colonial Frontier’ Chia-‐wen Kuo (Veronique Kwak), ‘Stephen King’s Carrie as an Aesthetic Revulsion against

Reproductive Futurism in Heteronormative Womanhood’ Jessica Folio, ‘Stephen King; or, the Literature of Non-‐exhaustion’ Panel 5D (RR): Gothic Design (Chair: Cian Duffy) Peter Lindfield, ‘Antiquarian Furniture and the “Modern Gothic” in England: An Unexplored

Connection’ Jonathan Kewley, ‘A Grave Dilemma: Gothic Grave Monuments of the 18th and early 19th

centuries’ Jana Gavriliu, ‘The Haunting Promise of “Female Pictorial Gothic”: Dress, Scarves, Hats,

Wreaths, Tiaras, Beads and Ribbons as Gothic Fashionable Pasts, and Gothic Fashionable Expected Futures in Dutch and Flemish Painting’

1.30 Lunch (AR) 2.30-‐4.30 Parallel Sessions 6

Panel 6A (WDR): The Nineteenth-‐Century Gothic Revival (Chair: Ronja Vieth) Nóra Veszprémi, ‘Taming the Terrors of the Past: Gothic Imagery and Representation of

National History in Nineteenth-‐Century Hungary’ Dominic Janes, ‘Early Victorian Moral Anxiety and the Queer Legacy of the Eighteenth-‐

Century Gothic Revival’ Richard William Hayes, ‘The Theme of the Monk in Nineteenth-‐Century English Architectural

Culture’

Panel 6B (BR): Contemporary Gothic Subcultures (II): Gaming, Social Media, Music (Chair: Allyson Purcell-‐Davis)

Ruth Adams, ‘Sopor Aeternus: Like a Corpse Standing in Desperation’ Marco Höhn, ‘”We’re all weird! But in very different ways!”: Gothic Identity in the

Fragmented German Gothic Scene – an Analysis of Self-‐Expression and Social Affiliation in Social Media Platforms’

John M. Skutlin, ‘Turning Goth in Japan: Behind the Scenes of Goth Subculture’s Japanese Localisation’



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Rachel Mizsei Ward, ‘Raging against the Dying of the Light: The Space Gothic of the Warhammer 40k Universe’

Panel 6C (SCR): Gothic Adaptation: Text, Film, Image (Chair: Lance Pettitt) David Langdon, ‘Dark Knights and Terrorist Novels : Exploring The Conservative Trend In The

Gothic Genre From Walpole’s Gothic Novel to Nolan’s Gotham City’ Neil McRobert, ‘It’s only a Movie: Found-‐Footage Cinema, Trauma and the Gothic

Manuscript’ Maria Gordusenko, ‘The Image of (Neo-‐) Gothic Sculpture in Contemporary Thrillers and

Science Fiction Films’ 4.30 Tea 5.00 Plenary 4 (WDR): Allan Simmons, ‘”The Horror! The Horror!”: Modern Gothic’ 6.00 Drinks and Farewells



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Ruth Adams, ‘Sopor Aeternus – Like A Corpse Standing in Desperation’ King’s College, London; [email protected] This paper takes as its focus Anna-‐Varney Cantodea, the protagonist of the German music project Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows since 1989. It considers how she disturbs and subverts normative categories of culture and the self to manifest the uncanny and and a potentially liberating ambiguity.

Anna-‐Varney asserts that although her music fuses elements of diverse genres, the essence of Sopor Aeternus always remains entirely gothic.’ It combines music, poetry and visuals to create a ‘highly individual expression of pain [and] isolation’, drawing on Jungian psychology, Nietzschean philosophy and both Western and Eastern gothic traditions. She deploys the shadow motif to explore the concept of the doppelganger, the dark underside of the of the human psyche ‘which, if acknowledged, provides vitality, creativity, and survival responses.’ (Franklin: 1980)

Deathly pale, emaciated, bald and spindly fingered, ageless, born male but radically transgendered, Anna-‐Varney has evident precedents in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Murnau’s Nosferatu, sharing with them what Halberstam (1993) describes as ‘a kind of Gothic economy in their ability to condense many monstrous traits into one body’. She draws too on the avant-‐garde Japanese dance form Butoh, (‘The Dance of Utter Darkness’), in which androgynous, white-‐powdered, shaven headed performers contort their faces and bodies, to create imagery both beautiful and grotesque.

This paper argues that Anna-‐Varney represents a gothic ‘composite of otherness’. Already othered by society, she takes control as the autonomous author of her own ‘monster’, her own otherness. Marla Arbach, ‘Gothic Disruption of Fantasy Conventions in Once Upon a Time’ University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain); [email protected] The television series Once Upon a Time (2011-‐present) features traditional fairy tale characters in two intertwined storylines: a flashback timeline showing their origins in Fairytale Land, and a present-‐day timeline featuring their lives in exile under new identities in the town of Storybrooke, Maine. The series deploys numerous fairy tale conventions, including royalty, dark lords, heroes, monsters, quests, and enchantments, all of which underscore the inevitable triumph of good over evil. However, the season 2 episode “The Doctor” introduces a new, disruptive element into the series’ fantasy ethos when it reveals that Storybrooke’s mysterious and slightly menacing doctor was originally Victor Frankenstein. Victor is presented as a true threat to the series’ powerful (magic-‐wielding) characters because his mastery of science allows him to operate outside their domain. The malevolent supernatural being he creates out of a person who symbolized innocence, goodness and true love not only injects the first elements of horror into the series but literally embodies the change that he has wrought to the series’ ethos. This paper will show not only how Victor’s arrival destabilizes the fairy tale conventions that previously operated in the text, but also how it brings to the surface certain Gothic elements already present, namely a complex exploration of humanity, nature, and morality. Susan Ash, ‘Gothic Tropes, Monstrous Mothers, and Dr Barnardo’s Promotional Vignettes’ Edith Cowan University, Perth; [email protected] This paper considers how the Victorian reformer, Dr. Barnardo, deployed gothic tropes in promotional vignettes, where human sensations, corporeal bodies, and architectural detritus merge to instigate fear in the reader regarding the stability of English social body and order. I investigate how these ‘true tales’ raise crucial questions about borders between inside/outside, animate and inanimate, indeed, between human and not-‐human. My argument builds on Grace Kehler’s analysis of early Victorian reform texts which, she argues, demonstrate a ‘largely unremarked’ and



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innovative use of a ‘gothic technology that graphically illustrates and appeals to the sensations…’. I consider Barnardo’s narratives as later examples of reform writing ‘routed’ viscerally through the body. (Kehler, ‘Gothic Pedagogy and Victorian Reform Treatises,’ 2008)

My perspective differs from scholars who frame Victorian child rescue narratives through the lens of melodrama and focus on the abject child. Instead, I investigate the malappropriate maternal body as a site that is ‘monstrous’ not in vitality, but in ruin, animated by disease, rot and death rather than life-‐giving forces. Inevitably this maternal body, a porous, gothic wreck of compromised interiors, is subjected to Barnardo’s own visceral interventions. As a sub-‐genre of melodrama, maternal melodrama may redeem the illicit mother through suffering, internalised shame and repentance. In contrast, Barnardo’s cautionary tales evoke a fear of perverted maternity and monstrous offspring and adamantly deny recovery to this figure of the mother. Framed as an urgent matter of national preservation, Barnardo replaces the Gothic nightmare with his own dream of domesticity and surrogate maternity. Joanna Babicka, ‘Hyper-Gothicism: Postmodern Gothic Intertextuality in True Blood’ University of Vienna; joanna@music-‐obscure.com Since the beginning of its existence, the Gothic tradition and culture incorporated the Zeitgeist of the respective time into the artistic artifacts produced. Works of literature underwent changes of topics and style and thus sometimes only tropes of the original Gothic are left. In contrast to this versatile development stands the TV series True Blood. Starting as a modern tale about vampires, more and more different Gothic features are added to the narrative, resulting in a postmodern Gothic pastiche in the fifth season drawing on history and cultural knowledge. The audience is confronted with a large number of supernatural creatures, a clash of religion and occultism and the threat of fundamentalist vampires erasing humanity and evoking the apocalypse. Mythical and historical figures appear in this modern setting, supporting a new fictional reading of history.

The analysis of the cultural and historical fundus employed in True Blood shows how postmodernity creates an ideal playground for Gothic culture to be embedded in contemporary culture, while transgressing conventional boundaries. Furthermore, it points out the features of the Gothic tradition which became part of our culture, enabling us to understand this intertextual narrative. Dorota Babilas, ‘True Blood: Consuming Vampires in Liquid Modernity’ Warsaw University; [email protected] It is a well-‐known fact that vampires are preternaturally adaptable imaginary creatures. Nina Auerbach observed in Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995) that throughout their cultural history vampires have followed the changes in the human society, functioning as useful and flexible metaphors for anything from sexual initiation to capitalist oppression. There can be little wonder that modern vampire stories conveyed in literature and onscreen – True Blood books and TV series serving as prominent examples – promote ideologies concerning gender, race and class that are specific to our own cultural moment. True Blood vampires no longer content themselves to suck blood; their own blood (and identity) have become pleasure drugs consumed by the postmodern culture in many different ways. They have engaged in reciprocal hurting, healing and intoxicating with their human victims as well as with the readers and viewers. In the proposed paper I intend to examine the phenomenon of True Blood and its treatment of vampire characters through the lens of Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of “liquid modernity”. In the social environment of multicultural postmodern consumerism, with its ambivalence and increasing feeling of uncertainty, True Blood vampires offer relevant commentary on the state of Western culture.



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Doreen Bauschke, ‘Haunted Bodies as “Gothic Desire”: Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl”’ Friedrich Schiller Universität, Jena; [email protected] Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) is a digital rewrite of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Its electronic corpus is haunted by a profusion of intertexts and constitutes an uncanny embodiment of the theory of intertextuality, which turns all writers into ghostwriters who are possessed by literary and linguistic phantoms of the past. Analogously, the body of the title character, which is stitched together from recycled anatomical parts of corpses, is haunted by the phantom persons of the donors of her organs and limbs. The grotesque patched physique of the title character as well as the ex-‐centric pieced anatomy of the hypertext deviate notably from conventional notions of textuality and identity, because both are multiple and mutable, instead of unified and non-‐contradictory. Consequently, they are deemed demons of multiplicity. Ultimately, however, their demoniacal plurality is celebrated in Patchwork Girl as a kind of ‘Gothic desire’, to appropriate Cynthia Sugar’s term. Their peculiar gestalt qualities are revealed as a tool for breaking down binaries and for enabling a synthesis of formerly incompatible opposites, so that their demoniacal plurality offers ultimately more freedom of expression than unified singular structures ever could. Sara Cleto, ‘“I live in you; and you would die for me”: Transgressive Love and the Gothic Vampire’ Ohio State University; [email protected] What is a Gothic vampire? What distinguishes this creature from earlier incarnations of the vampire? In this paper, I will argue that Gothic vampires inaugurated a threat of transgressive intimacy that transformed their cultural conceptualization. Unlike their ancestors—vampires that existed and thrived in folklore, particularly of the Slavic tradition—Gothic vampires are not merely indiscriminate hunters of blood. They also desire profound companionship and choose their victims accordingly. Using texts such as Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Polidori’s The Vampyre, and Coleridge’s Christabel, I will demonstrate how the Gothic vampire’s craving for intimacy complements and complicates his or her desire for blood, creating a space in which transgressive affection can be explored without being officially condoned. While these liaisons transgress by simple virtue of their interspecies nature, the homoeroticism that frequently characterizes these relationships heightens their violation of societal norms. By reframing the Other as an intimate friend or lover, early Gothic writers revitalized a folk legend and created a literary precedent—this taboo eroticism is a defining characteristic of most contemporary vampires, from Tanith Lee’s elegant Scarabees to Stephanie Meyer’s sparkling Cullen clan. Graça P. Corrêa, ‘Gothic Spatial Theory and Aesthetics: The Ecocentric Conjoining of Underworld and Otherworld in Regaleira (Sintra, Portugal)’ University of Algarve, Portugal; [email protected] This paper investigates the ecocritical implications of Gothic landscape and architectural design of “Quinta da Regaleira” (Sintra, Portugal), an estate comprising a palace, a chapel, and a park with grottoes, crypts, inverted towers and subterranean labyrinths, built in 1909. Projected within a Portuguese interpretation of the Gothic Revival style by its owner, Carvalho Monteiro, and the Italian set designer Luigi Manini, Regaleira has elicited studies of its Masonic symbolism, but has never been approached from a Gothic theoretical perspective. Resisting the functionalist worldview of the Enlightenment, the Gothic mode sought to recuperate the presence of the dead amongst the living not only in literary works but also in architectural spaces. Regarding landscape design, Gothicism similarly signaled a change of perception, whereby non-‐human Nature became appreciated for its wildness, irregularity, and ecodiversity, and for the contradicting emotions of wonder and horror that such qualities evoked. Correspondingly, I suggest that Regaleira’s spatial design theatrically expresses a dynamics of correspondences between the depths of an underworld and the heights of an otherworld, between historical past and present, between life and death. In



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view of such spatial activation, I argue that the Gothic mode articulates a non-‐normative concept of nature/culture within an Ecocentric ethics. Eva Čoupková, ‘”Vile treachery in my castle”: Subversion of Patriarchal Castle in Early Gothic Plays The Kentish Barons and The Ward of the Castle’ Masaryk University, Brno; [email protected] This paper discusses two early gothic dramas which were performed during Walpole’ s lifetime – The Kentish Barons (1791), the only play of Francis North, and the single play of Miss Burke entitled The Ward of the Castle (1793). Many critics read the Gothic writing as fundamentally subversive since it questions the political and social status quo. Kate F. Ellis sees the Gothic as the “subversion of domestic ideology” -‐ a reaction to gender roles and separate-‐sphere ideology that emerged at the end of the 18th century. Gothic castle becomes a dangerous place-‐ protagonists are imprisoned within its walls, longing for freedom; or they are exiled from it, unable to get inside. Moreover, it is a place where the master of the castle (a tyrant) exercises his unlimited power which is often directed against an unfortunate heroine. However, the Gothic play as a genre simultaneously employs and satirizes Gothic conventions, including the notion of a tyrant as the master of his castle. Through the frequent use of disguise and trapdoor, well-‐known devices in the Gothic Drama, both plays contain earthy humour, not so common in the Gothic novel, which makes them highly enjoyable.

Anna B. Creagh, ‘Gothic Influences of Zombie-lore’ UCLA; [email protected] This paper explores how Gothic literature in the nineteenth century, following the Haitian Revolution (1791-‐1804), helped give rise to zombie narratives as we know them today. Exploring the colonial influences of Gothic monsters such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and Mr. Hyde, I demonstrate how the rise of folklore about zombies in the United States correlates with the growth of Gothic horror literature in England. I also examine how horror films involving "undead" monsters from 1897-‐1967 employ Gothic literary tropes to create the eerie locales that come to be associated with racial Others and perceived threats to whiteness in the U.S. Transplanting England's Gothic mansions and castles to Caribbean plantations, early zombie films draw upon colonial histories and Gothic representations of monstrosity to create the grotesque figure of the Voodoo-‐zombie-‐slave. Embodying deep-‐seated cultural fears, the Gothic zombie reigns as the most popular Hollywood monster for over twenty years, giving way to other monster-‐types for several decades but ultimately "rising again" in response to increasing paranoia over the 'threats' of globalization. Though some scholars locate the origin of the zombie solely in Haitian culture and ethnography, I propose that Gothic literature has a profound influence on the development of zombie-‐lore in popular discourse. Viviane Delpech, ‘The chateau d’Abbadia in Hendaye (France) : Antoine d’Abbadie’s romantic and political utopia’ Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, France; [email protected] Back from his twelve-‐year exploration in Ethiopia, Bask-‐Irish scientist Antoine d’Abbadie (1810-‐1897) ordered to architects Viollet-‐le-‐Duc and Edmond Duthoit to build his castle on the ocean cliffs of Bask country. Obviously inspired of Strawberry Hill House, the château d’Abbadia results from a medieval, orientalist and modern interbreeding within a gothic revival context. This eclecticism is of a profound significance all the more as d’Abbadie desapproved french political regime and was involved in catholic missions with an unusual fervor. So, how can Abbadia’s gothic revival be similar to a political contestation model, and then to a counter-‐culture ? What are its limits between social claim and romantic reverie? This communication attempts to show that d’Abbadie’s approach consisted in recreate a dreamlike microcosm expressing his both romantic and reactionnary ideals. Abbadia’s gothic revival is not



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limited to architecture and decors but it also spreads in the whole property in a way of life founded on feodal and catholic society models. Jonanthan Dent, ‘History’s Other: Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and David Hume’s The History of England’ Loughborough University; [email protected] This interdisciplinary paper examines the complex, often antagonistic relationship between Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Hume’s The History of England. Walpole’s correspondence reveals that he had read numerous volumes of Hume’s history before writing Otranto and that he did not think very highly of its content or the methods used to write it. This paper discusses the extent to which Walpole’s novel can be read as a response to Hume’s attitudes towards the past, which were heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophy. Focusing on the Gothic trope of the discovered manuscript, violence and textuality, answers to a number of key questions are sought. For example, why is Otranto seemingly fixated with a bygone age and for what reason is it so concerned with historical authenticity? What techniques does Walpole use to write the past and how do these compare with Hume’s methods? Discussing the proliferation of violent and supernatural occurrences in Otranto, this paper contends that the Gothic functions as Enlightenment history’s other by exploiting its insecurities and plaguing its vulnerabilities. Taking into account a wealth of historical evidence, this paper proposes that Walpole’s novel can be read as an imaginative revolt against the Enlightenment philosophy that underpins Hume’s historiography. Martin Dines , ‘American Suburban Gothic’ Kingston University; [email protected] If uncertainty and anxiety are the troubling but potentially radical qualities of gothic narrative, suburban gothic has typically been understood in terms of a banal unhomeliness which merely confirms reassuring commonplaces about the postwar American suburbs. In such readings, the suburbs are supposed to embody a desire to stand outside of history: either they are places in which people seek refuge from their own pasts, or they represent an idealized past removed from the challenges of the present. This presentation will argue that Jeffrey Eugenides’s 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides undermines easy assumptions about the suburbs’ atemporality. The novel’s various gothic motifs suggest the difficulty of abandoning European pasts in order to adopt the white American identities required for a life in the suburbs; repressed ethnic difference haunts the suburban landscape. Yet Eugenides’s suburban gothic also complicates the process of remembering such acts of forgetting: the difficulty of explicating suburban pasts, the novel insists, is precisely a measure of their having become historical. The drive to present comforting, codified narratives of the suburbs is shown to be part of a move – which always fails – to disassociate the present from these sites of conflict and trauma. Cian Duffy St. Mary’s University College; [email protected] Rebecca Duncan, ‘Someone’s Always Buying:’ Murder, Magic and Millennial Capitalism in Zoo City’ Justus-‐Liebig University of Gießen; [email protected] In this paper, I read Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City as a novel in which elements of terror and horror conspire to question utopian visions of the ‘new’ South Africa. In particular, I suggest, the narrative is informed by anxieties surrounding a postapartheid enthusiasm for the free market: equal opportunities do not guarantee liberation in Zoo City. Beukes’s Johannesburg is a segregated metropolis, divided into zones of desperation and privilege, and throughout its rampant consumer culture, concepts like ‘tolerance’ and ‘equality’ circulate as free-‐floating signs. Divorced from the



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world, ideals jostle with designer labels, the latest technology and myriad other purchasable images through which citizens are encouraged to construct their post-‐1994 identities. Drawing on the work of anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff, I suggest that Beukes’s intensely gothic engagement with the arcane – the cold, impersonal force of ‘Hell’s Undertow’, the horrific dehumanisation of ritual murder – pushes this externalisation of the self to its nightmarish extreme, and that this strategy, which conjures the darkest implications of South Africa’s encounter with neoliberalism, also drives Zoo City’s broader gothic agenda. Finally, I comment on Beukes’s self-‐conscious deployment of the horror genre, which, the text repeatedly reminds us, is not exempt from disarmament through the very forms of commodification against which it is mobilised. Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez, ‘Bela Lugosi isn’t Dead…He's Just Vacationing in the Caribbean Lawrence University, Wisconsin; gabriel.a.eljaiek-‐[email protected] While there was undoubtedly a great transfer of liberal ideas and enlightening knowledge that made the long journey from Europe to Latin America throughout the nineteenth century, it should also be noted that, just as in Stoker's Dracula, some monsters snuck in as well, in the imaginations of Latin American writers and intellectuals. Although this Latin American tribute to the European Gothic originally began as a straightforward imitation of the genre's major styles and themes, it quickly evolved and transformed over time into its own unique entity: into a Tropical Gothic which, despite its change of context, still maintained its transformative and subversive character.

I propose that this particular form of the Gothic transforms the European genre while preserving stock characters, situations and themes, both paying homage to and parodying the genre as a form of a social commentary of their own uniquely Latin American context. In this paper I will further elaborate and demonstrate the transformation and “tropicalization” of the Gothic (and the political and cultural implications of its use) in two Latin American movies: Pura sangre (Pure Blood 1982) by Colombian filmmaker Luis Ospina and Vampiros en la Habana (Vampires in Habana 1985) by Cuban filmmaker Juan Padrón. Justin Everett, ‘Cosmic Gothic: Spatial Anxiety and Cosmic Horror in Weird Tales, 1924-1940’ University of the Sciences, Philadelphia; [email protected] Anxiety about the invasion of private space is evident in Gothic-‐influenced stories appearing in Weird Tales. Though conventional Gothic tales appeared in the magazine, H.P. Lovecraft appropriated and expanded the Gothic within the new genre of cosmic horror. Two anxieties about space are displayed in cosmic horror: fear of the invasion of private space common in the Gothic and fear of exposure to the cosmic, creating a sense of vulnerability. The second produces despair with awareness of the unimportance and inevitable extinction of humans. In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” Walter Gilman realizes his rented room’s angles coincide with his theory that certain mathematical angles make intergalactic travel possible. The first anxiety occurs in his dreams, and then in his room with the arrival of the Brown Jenkin. The second anxiety occurs when Gilman realizes that the deaths in the house are due to intergalactic beings. Similar anxieties can be found in “The Music of Erich Zann,” where Zann plays his viol to restrain transdimensional creatures entering his window. Other Weird Tales writers who utilized the Gothic and cosmic horror motifs include Smith, Moore, Howard, Kuttner, and Derleth, whose influence continues though literature, film, television, and cyberculture. Jessica Folio, ‘Stephen King; or, the literature of non-exhaustion’ University of Réunion Island; [email protected] The presentation focuses on Stephen King’s long-‐form narratives and attempts at perceiving the elements accounting for his endless success. As we choose this title for our article, we clearly keep in mind John Barth’s essay. The choice of “punning” Barth’s title is made so as to situate ourselves in



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the wake of postmodernist studies to try and analyze King’s deconstruction and reconstruction of common ideas, myths and the Gothic genre, applying them to the contemporary era. The choice of this angle of study is accounted by the fact that our aim is to prove that King has not literarily exhausted himself in spite of his thirty-‐eight years of writing and is in a constant quest for a renewal of the Gothic genre. The notion of remolding is one of the red threads allowing to weave the intricate cloth of postmodernism. We will here humbly try to unveil the essential elements perceived in King’s narratives which allow to qualify him as “a postmodern writer.” Catherine Gadsby-Mace, ‘ “God! ‘Tis the Bleeding Nun!”: The Dire Consequences of Female Sexuality’ University of Sheffield; c.gadsby-‐[email protected] As Toni Reed has rightly noted, “aberrant sexuality in Gothic literature is often associated with supernatural beings” and, in turn, aberrant sexuality is frequently attributed to women. It comes as no surprise then that a strong union exists between sexualised women and supernatural entities in Gothic fiction. This relationship is quintessentially demonstrated in the ever-‐popular motif of the female Demon Lover, whose increasing physical monstrosity is the outward manifestation of her inner sexual corruption. My paper will focus on Matthew Lewis’s notorious Demon Lover, the Bleeding Nun, with reference to The Monk (1796) and to her several reappearances in poetical and theatrical works. I will attempt to demonstrate how the prolific use of the Demon Lover motif in late eighteenth-‐century fiction can be attributed to the biological and sociological redefinition of female sex and gender that accompanied the change from the one-‐sex to the two-‐sex model. Ultimately, I will argue that the Bleeding Nun is a symptom of the Gothic’s fraught exploration of female sexuality and desire. Moreover, that the evolution of the Bleeding Nun’s representation suggests a growing accommodation of this sexuality in contemporary culture. Jane Gavriliu, The haunting promise of „female pictorial gothic”: dress, scarfs, hats, wreaths, tiaras, beads and ribbons as gothic fashionable pasts and gothic fashionable expected futures in Dutch and Flemish painting’ University of Bucharest; [email protected] Gothic studies are not restricted to the study of those ways of making sense of life, which are intentionally expressed in textual works. The field also remains open to the exploration of unintentional and implicit gothic values, as expressed in performances, social rituals, painting and fashion. Besides that, as Christopher Breward would say (Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress), the careful consideration of surviving or reinvented gothic clothing and of its representation in paintings could be seen as a useful toll in the processes of authentification and connoisseurship.

Starting from these ideas, my contribution aims to propose a possible new art history. A history that casts its shadows by analysing the haunting images of dress, scarfs, hats, wreaths, tiaras, beads and ribbons in Dutch and Flemish painting rather that by stressing the qualities of brushwork (Alexandra Palmer, New Directions: Fashion History Studies and Research, A. Rees and F. Borzello, The New Art History). In this possible new art history pictorial dress, scarfs, hats, wreaths, tiaras, beads and ribbons narrate, in specific pictorial manners, stories about women’s sometimes betrayed or trapped bodies (Donna Heiland, Gothic & Gender. An Introduction ), about women’s gothic fashionable pasts and women’s gothic fashionable expected futures.

In this way, I intend to argue that the gothic fashionable feminity is a complex mental edifice (Jerome Bruner, The remembered self) and that a fashionable unique gothic feminine self does not exist. What still exists is a network of relational and distributed properties of fashionable gothic feminities as well as some improvized fashionable painted stories of gothic feminity’s pasts and gothic feminity’s expected futures, that have a way of changing with pictorial circumstances, with



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gothic fashion as system of nonverbal signs and with audiences and their ways of looking at Dutch and Flemish paintings. Steve Gerrard, ‘Film Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft: “The world is indeed comic; but the joke is on Mankind.”’ University of Wales Trinity Saint David; [email protected] So said Howard Phillips Lovecraft, American author of macabre, gothic-‐horror literature of the early-‐twentieth century. His works were largely derided during his lifetime and he liked little of what he wrote. But filmmakers have often turned to his prose to create nightmarish versions of their own based upon his work.

Evocative titles such as At the Mountains of Madness and The Colour out of Space could not easily transpose themselves to the silver screen. But, in 1985 Stuart Gordon’s Re-‐Animator brought to (un)life the story of Herbert West, a Miskatonic University doctor who brings cadavers back from beyond the grave. Based on the six-‐part serialised Herbert West – Reanimator stories, Gordon’s ultra-‐low budget version updates Lovecraft’s intentions capturing him as a sardonic, insatiable, driven Frankenstein for the VHS generation.

This paper will examine how Re-‐Animator (and its sequels) was adapted for cinema, and in particular how it opened the appeal of its subject matter to a wider audience than before. Giulio Girondi, ‘Gothic Heritage in Renaissance Mantova’ Politecnico di Milano; [email protected] Mantua is well known for its Renaissance monuments, built under the supervision of the Gonzaga family from the middle of the 15th century. Indeed, Ludovico 2nd Gonzaga wanted that leading artists and architects – such as Andrea Mantegna and Leon Battista Alberti – join his court to transform the capital of the small marquisate into an international art center. On the other hand, if several patricians started to imitate the new “all’antica” style promoted by the Gonzaga court, others – such as noblemen, merchants and priests – continued to follow the Gothic tradition until the last decade of the “Quattrocento”. For example, the church dedicated to the “Madonna della Vittoria (1496) seems very important: beyond its Gothic facades, this church originally housed the well-‐known altarpiece by Mantegna (now at Louvre) and important Renaissance frescoes – just rediscovered by recent restorations – almost certainly noted by Vasari who suggested that also the interior architecture of the small church was designed by Mantegna. This is not the only example of Gothic heritage in Renaissance Mantua: the church of San Cristoforo – that show a venetian-‐inspired façade – was almost certainly begun in 1470s, when works at Alberti’s Sant’Andrea were just started; moreover, we should mention also private chapels, such as the one of the Striggi family in the church of Santa Maria della Carità. New archival evidences – as the testament of Giovanni Striggi – permit us to date this Gothic architecture to 1486. Michael Goddard, ‘Sonic Hauntologies in Industrial Musics’ University of Salford; [email protected] This paper will argue that Industrial Music from its inception has been prone to multiple hauntings and forms of spectrality, constituting a distinctly gothic sonic hauntology. Sonic Hauntology is a term that was used in relation to quite different forms of haunted music by Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher, who derived it form Derrida’s use of the term in Spectres of Marx (2006). However, there is a clear difference between the literary huantinggs in the work of Shakespeare and Marx that Derrida discusses, and the technological mediation of sonic hauntologies, even if this does provide a kind of lineage that also detours via the Gothic as such. From the influence of Burroughsian cut-‐ups and even further back to the spectral voices on early phonographic recordings, Industrial music calls up multiple spectres of technological modernity both via its very techniques of rhythmic montages of



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found sounds, through to its frequent thematics and obsessions with the persistent excluded detritus of 20th Century modernity. Whether this is in regard to occultism and the supernatural, the voices of mass murderers and psychotics (Throbbing Gristle), or radio transmissions concerning Baader Meinhof (Cabaret Voltaire), industrial music picks up on and transmutes a spectral modernity via a haunted aesthetics highly resonant with the gothic. This paper will argue that this was especially the case with the post TG projects of Psychick TV, Chris and Cosey and especially Coil, which intensify the already spectral music of TG in multiple articulations of sonic hauntologies, that can productively be considered as an alternative genealogy of the gothic in contemporary synthetic music. Maria Gordusenko, ‘The image of (Neo-)Gothic sculpture in contemporary thrillers and science fiction films’ Ekatarinburg Museum of Fine Arts, Russia; [email protected] The impact of Gothic and Neo-‐Gothic art is largely felt in contemporary films. In this context the role of sculpture is particularly specific and could even compete with the role of architecture in its significance. Film directors often use pieces of sculpture to create the atmosphere in their films (The Underworld, 2003; The Underworld: Evolution, 2005).

However, the function of sculpture is not always just decorative. The motif of an enliven sculpture is found in a variety of recent films. For instance, in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows (2012) sculptures are perceived not only as decoration of a mansion, but also play their roles in the high point of the film. There is a group of films about gargoyles in which these sculpted monsters come to life and kill people. In all cases these ‘medieval’ creatures are associated with Satan and confronted by the representatives of political or religious power: the CIA, the Vatican or the army (Gargoyles, 2004; The Rise of the Gargoyles, 2009). In The Reign of the Gargoyles (2007) they are shown as an instrument, or biological weaponry, that the Nazi use during the World War II.

This paper examines the perception of Gothic and Neo-‐Gothic sculptures in films; it questions why these pieces lose their relation with the period and gain a rather sinister image. Jon Hackett St. Mary’s University College; [email protected] Richard William Hayes, ‘Sir John Soane and the Theme of the Monk’ Clare College, Cambridge; [email protected] After the death of his wife, English architect John Soane created a “monastic suite” in the basement of his house and museum at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Soane had several intentions in creating this sequence of spaces: as the setting for a fictional alter-‐ego, “Padre Giovanni;” as the repository for his feelings of grief and mourning; and as a poetic arrangement of spaces that explored ideas of the Picturesque. As architectural historian John Summerson noted, Soane also conceived of the suite as a way to satirize the rising fashion for Gothic antiquarianism. Although the literature on Soane has grown enormously over the past few years, his monastic rooms have not yet received scholarly attention.

While Soane’s monk’s suite may seem a jeu d’esprit of limited interest, it is my contention that the idea of the monk has wide-‐ranging implications in English architectural culture of the nineteenth century. It is significant in terms of Soane’s career as well as an underlying structure informing English architecture from the Picturesque through the Gothic Revival, exemplifying the dynamic of working through the medieval inheritance.

My paper places Soane’s interest in the figure of the monk in the context of his era by studying literary examples of the Gothic antiquarianism he satirized, including The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1765), Vathek by William Beckford (1786), and The Monk by M.G. Lewis (1796).



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Soane invoked themes from these works in an artistic exploration of the poetry of architecture through his design of the monastic suite. While designing his monastic suite Soane visited Knaresborough in Yorkshire, the evocative site of medieval castle ruins and a hermit’s cell. Soane’s rooms for a fictional monk engage the combined ludic and archeological impetus characteristic of the Gothic Revival, extending from William Kent and Sanderson Miller through Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. Lastly, my paper inquires briefly into the persistence of this topos in Anglo-‐American architectural culture after Soane. The power of the monk’s suite in Soane’s house derives from the architect’s ability to give expression to his mourning and melancholy by tapping into larger cultural paradigms.

Imker Heuer, ‘”Prejudice and principle crumbled at once to dust” - Harriet Lee’s Revolutionary Appropriation of Radcliffian Gothic’ University of Southampton, University of Kingston; [email protected] Now primarily known for her story ‘The German’s Tale -‐ Kruitzner’, which Byron adapted in his tragedy Werner, Harriet Lee (1757-‐1851) was one of the most successful prose writers of her time. While recent years have seen a growing interest in Harriet and her sister Sophia, author of the historico-‐Gothic novel The Recess, surprisingly little has been written on their collaborative collection The Canterbury Tales (1797-‐1805), arguably their most innovative literary project. After a short introduction to the Lees’ role in the development of the Romantic tale as a genre, my paper will focus on Harriet’s political appropriation of Radcliffean Gothic in ‘The Frenchman’s Tale – Constance’, published in the first volume of the series (1797). At first sight a predictable, even formulaic Gothic story seeminlgy at odds with the collection’s experimental dimension, as I will discuss, ‘Constance’ is a complex rewriting of Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest that updates Radcliffe’s subtle, ambiguous critique of the ancient régime. Set at the height of French Revolution during the Jacobin Terror, Lee’s rewriting implicitly undermines the traditional Gothic narrative about the providential restoration of a noble title to its rightful owner. Stressing instead that all social order is man-‐made, fluid and dependent on specific historical circumstances, she explores questions about social identity in a post-‐feudal world only hinted at in Radcliffe. Additionally, I will show how, engaging with radical political discourse, Lee’s subversive use of the Gothic mode rewrites and complicates Edmund Burke’s famous representation of the Gothic quality of the French Revolution. My paper will open up perspectives on literary responses to the French Revolution, on the potential of the Gothic restoration narrative for political subversion and ambiguity, and on the strategic ways in which women writers used Gothic fiction to participate in (male-‐dominated) political, social and cultural debates. Marco Höhn, ‘„We’re all weird! But in very different ways.“ Gothic identity in the fragmented German gothic scene – an analysis of self-expression and social affiliation on social media platforms.’ University of Bremen; marco.hoehn@uni-‐bremen.de In following Krappmann (1971), Krotz (2003) and Keupp (2006) it can be assumed that identity building between self-‐ expression and social affiliation is heavily based on media communication. The German gothic scene today is a highly fragmented and at the same time a strongly expressive post-‐modern community (in the sense of Hitzler (2001)) where questions of identity are discussed in many ways. The paper reconstructs how members of different gothic sub-‐scenes perform on different social media platforms? How is their social interaction related to social affiliation and forms of self-‐expression? What can we say about individual and community identity building in and between these split groups? Therefore I analyzed profiles and communication on platforms like blacksins.de, cyber-‐gothic.de or schwarzesglück.de. In addition I conducted over 20 open qualitative interviews with members of different gothic sub-‐scenes in Germany, such as Batcave, Cyber Gothic, Gothic Metal and the Medieval scene. Findings indicate that the German gothic scene is very



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fragmented that no overarching community identity can be found. On social media platforms gothic people are focussed on their individual self-‐expression and impression-‐management strategies seeking for attention and confirmation by other members of their sub-‐scenes. Therefore the distinction from other gothic sub-‐scenes becomes an integral part of the users’ identity management which even leads to segregating movements like Keep your scene clean! Avril Horner, ‘Walpole, the Gothic, and Surrealism’ (Plenary Paper 1) Kingston University; [email protected] Bill Hughes ‘”Two kinds of romance”: generic hybridity and epistemological uncertainty in contemporary paranormal romance’ University of Sheffield; [email protected] Contemporary Gothic, in the newly-‐emerged subgenre of paranormal romance, is countercultural in intriguing new ways, taking on a new relationship with the Enlightenment refracted through postmodern suspicions. To be countercultural today is often to embrace, resurrect, and continue the Enlightenment project, recognising with Habermas that the problem is that the project was incomplete. Paranormal romance, despite its commercial success, is often countercultural in this way (though ambivalently).

The genre emerged as a new avatar of Horace Walpole’s attempt to fuse ‘two kinds of romance’ as Gothic novel—the mythic strain of Romance proper, with its ‘imagination, visions and passions’, and what later becomes the novel, committed to the quotidian and to psychological verisimilitude. To this may be added a third kind of romance, the everyday sense of ‘romantic fiction’; here, involving the amorous relations of mortal and paranormal creatures, well-‐known to us through Twilight.

Genres are closely bound up with perspectives, with ways of knowing or questioning. The uneasy mating of romance and novel, paranormal and human, enables a dialogue between the different epistemologies of Enlightenment and its discontents.

This paper will explore how ‘two kinds of romance’, plus a third, enable an exploration of dominant postmodern perspectives and the counterculture that is Enlightenment. Johan Höglund, ‘“Please Kill Me”: Euthanasia and the Imperial Gothic’ Linnaeus University, Sweden; [email protected] Although separated by a century, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1898) and the AMC television series The Walking Dead (2010-‐) both describe how Gothic forces transform Western subjects into contagious, abject and cannibalistic Others that need to be disposed of through ritualized violence: in Dracula with the stake through the heart, in The Walking Dead through the headshot. In both narratives, the killing of the Gothic Other is celebrated as a heroic confrontation between good and evil. In their readings of the Victorian gothic, Stephen D. Arata and Patrick Brantlinger have both argued that these absolute categories must be understood in relation to Empire where gothic Others such as Dracula represent Oriental invaders, set on vengeful, reverse colonisation of the Empire. Similarly, more recent scholarship by Kyle Bishop, Timothy Fox and Christian Thorne suggest that the modern Gothic also relies on an imperial dynamic and that the zombie often personifies the Middle Eastern terrorist or Asian imperial competitor. In this way, the killing of the transformed Gothic Other can be understood as encouraging a form of metaphorical imperial violence.

While this reading of the Victorian and modern Gothic is fundamentally convincing, it should be noted that the violence perpetrated against the Gothic Other is sometimes seen as deeply tragic and needs to be understood as a form euthanasia rather than as heroic intervention. In Dracula, Arthur Holmwood reels when he has finally finished driving the stake through the heart of his undead fiancée Lucy. In The Walking Dead, survivor Morgan Jones shakes with tears and grief as he



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aims his hunting rifle on his now cannibalistic zombie wife who stumbles through the streets below. In fact, those infected by the Gothic Other often ask to be euthanized before the transformation is complete: “Please kill me”. Those who respond are seen as performing acts of terrible mercy rather than combating gothic evil.

These sequences subtly complicate the imperial reading of these and other Gothic texts. Focusing on euthanasia in the Gothic, this paper discusses the different reasons why the border between the modern citizen and the Gothic Other is so porous and easily transgressed. If late nineteenth-‐century British imperialism argued that racial, social and cultural categories are absolute, the Gothic often introduce those same categories only to have them infect each other. In this way, the infectious and invasive nature of the gothic Other always allows a certain amount of metaphorical transculturation or counterculturation to occur. As Rick Grimes observes in The Walking Dead, “we are all infected”. Dominic Janes, ‘Early Victorian moral anxiety and the queer legacy of the eighteenth-century gothic revival’ B i r k b e c k , L o n d o n ; d . j a n e s @ b b k .a c .u k This proposed paper explores some of the reasons for the concern, one might almost say obsession on the part of both the Catholic convert A.W.N. Pugin and the Anglican leadership of the Cambridge Camden (Ecclesiological) Society for precision and correctness of form in gothic architecture and design. The answers, I will suggest, lie in a striking combination of concerns over wealth, pleasure and sexual morality. In 1844 Punch launched a spirited attack on London’s Exeter Hall. This was one of the pre-‐eminent centres for evangelical self-‐expression in the capital. A major element in the newly established satirical magazine’s weaponry was the allegedly luxurious decorations of the Hall. These, according the writer, provided eloquent testimony to the hypocrisy of those gathered within who pretended to be concerned with the woes of the world, but who were, in fact, mostly occupied in seeing to their own comfort. Interestingly, very similar attacks were mounted by advocates of the developing gothic revival against the use of classical styles for the construction of churches. Pointed contrasts, to echo A. W. N. Pugin, were made between the rows of simple wooden pews recommended by ecclesiologists and those ostentatious box pews, supposedly well-‐supplied with cushions and scent, which they were intended to replace. However, Punch’s anti-‐evangelical stance was itself to be replaced by the end of the 1840s by critiques of those ritualists who were advocating medieval styles of liturgy and decoration with the Church of England. Satirical cartoons of the early 1850s, for instance, regularly associated gothic adornments with the feminine amusements of rich women play-‐acting at being nuns and of their foppish male counterparts. These anxieties drew considerable energy from the story of the eighteenth-‐century gothic revival which was heavily associated with the dilettante tastes of men such as Horace Walpole. Moreover, as George Haggerty has argued, much of gothic taste of that earlier period had been so predicated on issues of sexual transgression that it could be understood as representing a form of queer self-‐expression. This paper will argue that the early Victorian campaign to ensure the artistic and moral purity of gothic needs to interpreted in the light of the queerness of many aspects of the preceding gothic revival. Derek Johnston, ‘Eruptions of the Abnormal: Gothic/Horror Episodes of Mainstream Television Series and the Dominance of Rational Worldviews’ Queen’s University Belfast; [email protected] This paper explores the relationship between the eruptions of the abnormal which are a key part of the Gothic genre across media, and the use of the genre within mainstream television series to provide an occasional special episode that breaches the normality of that programme. Such episodes typically occur at particular parts of the year: Christmas in Britain and Hallowe’en in the US. The supernatural element of these episodes forms a wound of irrationality in series which typically



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depend upon an essentially rational mode, e.g. detective series like Bergerac, Castle and Hawai’i Five-‐O. This echoes the specialness of the time of the year in those seasonal episodes, times which have been perceived as wounds or weakenings in the boundary between the natural and supernatural worlds. But even in episodes broadcast at other times of the year these intrusions of the abnormal into the apparently normal serve to open up the normative rationality of the texts to suggest a wider universe and the existence of spiritual and supernatural possibilities. These programmes thus suggest that rationality remains the dominant and most useful way of understanding the universe, but that the possibility of the irrational should be accepted. Jonathan Kewley, ‘A Grave Dilemma: Gothic Grave Monuments of the 18th and early 19th Centuries’ University of Durham; [email protected] Gothic is rare in England as a style for gravestones in the Georgian period. It becomes common (locally ubiquitous) only in the mid-‐nineteenth century under the influence of the ecclesiologists. Who used it in the Georgian period? Was its significance political or aesthetic? Was it associated with the use of Gothic for new or existing churches? How far is there a divide between archæologically-‐correct Gothic and the more purely picturesque? Why does it almost never replicate actual mediæval graveyard markers?

Looking at individual examples from across England, this paper will try to answer these questions. It will explore the context of the memorials and what is known of those they commemorate and those who commissioned or designed them. It will compare the English position with that in North America, where elements at least of Gothic become common much earlier, and consider how far this was ideological – and how radically different from the Anglo-‐Catholic ideology which finally brought Gothic into the English churchyard mainstream. Laura Kremmel, ‘Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die: Romantic Decomposition in the Works of Matthew Lewis and Charlotte Dacre’ Lehigh University; [email protected] A vital figure in Romantic Gothic studies, Matthew Lewis scandalized Britain with his gruesome and graphic literature. From imprisoned mothers coddling baby corpses to villains trampled to sludge by an angry mob, he helped to establish the genre as one of transgression and excess. The works of both Lewis and his female counterpart, Charlotte Dacre, feature characters who reach beyond death to fulfill a vow or punish the breaking of one. These undead figures are not beautiful and otherworldly Twilight figures, however, but abhorrent and abject creatures: both poets thereby challenge the literary convention of the typical undead lover, yet do so in distinctly different ways. My project seeks to explore depictions of the physical (de)composition of the body in these texts in association with these kept or broken vows. What can such descriptions say about the mutability and productivity of the body as well as the mutability and productivity of the love and vows associated with them? What could this indicate in regards to gender conventions and challenges within the Gothic, both today and at its origin? I also investigate whether Romantic-‐era fascination with interiority of the body speaks to the current obsession with dissection, bodily decay, and infection in such Gothic crazes as zombies and the Saw movies. Chia-wen Kuo (Veronique Kwak), ‘Stephen King’s Carrie as an Aesthetic of Revulsion against Reproductive Futurism in Heteronomative Womanhood’ Taiwan National Cheng-‐chi University; [email protected] Lee Edelman indicates that the Child is "the imprimatur of meaning-‐production on heterogenital relations" as well as a "fetishistic fixation of heteronomativity," and the Child functions as the key signifier over the equilibrium of the system. However, in the case of Stephen King's Carrie, Carrie



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White is the un-‐wanted child whose mother withholds the secret of feminine mystique (menstruation) from her.

Judith Halberstam notes the pleasure of Gothic "resides in the visibility of suture" – "the confusion between the representation and reality." Carrie exposes the grim reality of womanhood through her first menstruation in public and disrupts the representation of the sanitized womanhood. Later, Carrie’s “bleeding suture” becomes a revengefully rabid body that splatters despite Halberstam terms in Skin Shows that Gothic female bodies are more often "sutured" than splattered.

Here, the menstruating genital is the un-‐sutured orifice that bears subversive, freakish potential that Carrie fails to fully control but gets mercilessly provoked instead. The case of Carrie manifests Hannah Arendt's "the banality of evil" among women who complicitly victimize Carrie to eschew the revulsion against the heteronomative reproduction which menstruation brings forward, and Carrie’s last wish before dying is a return to mother – to the uterus just to be unborn. David Langdon, ‘Dark Knights and Terrorist Novels: Exploring The Conservative Trend In The Gothic Genre From Walpole’s Gothic Novel to Nolan’s Gotham City’ University of Glamorgan; [email protected] The Gothic genre is commonly figured as a force of pure subversion, which seeks at all times to expose society’s flaws and provide tempting, if impractical, alternatives. It is my belief, however, that it is possible to detect a vein of conservatism within the genre that persists through into the modern day. I intend to explore this idea through Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy of films, themselves a fascinating example of the contemporary Gothic with its echoes of 9/11 and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. I shall examine the ways these films demonstrate a form of Gothic that appears to disapprove of unconventional solutions to social problems and support conventional methods of resolution, drawing upon Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde and Stoker’s Dracula for context. Amber Larner, ‘”A Nation Under Siege from Within”: Stephen King’s Gothic Landscape as Post-Colonial Frontier’ Manchester Metropolitan University; [email protected] Whilst not an overt aspect of Stephen King’s novels and short stories, references to Native American people and cultures abound in his literature. Such allusions often invoke stereotypical notions of native people’s interconnection with a feminised and maternal landscape whilst, I would argue, simultaneously inferring the guilt of the masculinised coloniser for the usurpation and destruction of these formerly native-‐occupied lands. In my paper, I will argue that the Gothic is the ideal platform for King’s subtle examination of post-‐colonial guilt, due to the Gothic’s history of employing metaphorical representations of landscape in order to critique cultural orthodoxies. Such analyses are inherently subversive, alluding to, rather than asserting, an intrinsic dis-‐ease present in the very landscape of such novels, a guilt which lies beneath (literally) the feet of the (post-‐)colonist in King’s work. It is my contention that such oblique modes of discussion via the Gothic landscape reveal the uncomfortable relationship of post-‐colonial America in accepting both its past and present: a ubiquitous yet frequently unacknowledged sense of culpability. Furthermore, I will assert that the depiction of King’s Native American landscapes as fertile and feminised spaces, and his male protagonists’ uneasy relationship with these areas, reveals the underlying anxieties that underpin 20th and 21st century American masculinity.



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Rolf P. Lessenich, ‘Gothic Narratives, the Exploration of the Unconscious Before Freud, and the Subversion of Progressivist Orthodoxy’ University of Bonn; r.lessenich@uni-‐bonn.de The unconscious or subconscious was simultaneously discovered and explored by Preromantic poets, novelists, and dramatists on the one hand and by philosophers, psychologists and physicians on the other hand. Long before Freud, it was recognized as the seat of chaotic and morally unregulated impulses (Freud's "id") that surge up and interfere with our public lives regulated by internalized moral and social norms (Freud's "super-‐ego"). This confirmed Hobbes's and anticipated Freud's theories of original man as an aggressive beast, only temporarily domesticated by a social contract and a thin layer of civilization. The unconscious, symbolized by dark and closed spaces such as subterranean caverns, geological mines, secret chambers, locked boxes, or coffins, appears as a revenant that would again and again erupt and prevent all progress of science and civilization. Bram Stoker's Dracula, for instance, who avails himself of modern science and walks London as a respectable Victorian gentleman, nevertheless carries atavistic layers of homo homini lupus below the fine human varnish. This paper examines the representation of the unconscious and its subversive antagonism to progress in Gothic narratives by Ludwig Tieck and Edward Bulwer-‐Lytton. Hsin Hsuan (Cynthia) Lin, ‘The Castle of Otranto and Strawberry Hill House: the Curious Cases’ National Taiwan University, [email protected] This paper reads Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto within the social-‐economic fabric of eighteenth-‐century Britain, a world of overwhelming materiality founded upon a bourgeoning credit economy. In the deceiving preface, the pseudo-‐translator declares Otranto to be a discovery from an ancient family’s library. Should it be successful, he would consider reprint the original text, thereby turning it into a collectable and desirable object, a curious commodity. The narrative then guides the reader-‐spectator through the castle, conjuring up objects and spaces as the action proceeds. Constructed like a cabinet of curiosities, Otranto displays an array of dramatical yet rather flat characters and a panopoly of seemingly absurd Gothic machineries. Otranto and Strawberry Hill house, Wunderkammer of another form, contend to frame one another while each claiming to be the other’s origin or history. Examining their discursive nexus, which addresses the tension between intrinsic and imagined value, between the constraining power of enclosure and the destabilizing power of excess, this paper intends to answer the following questions: How does Otranto explore curiosity both in form and in theme? How does The Castle of Otranto, together with Strawberry Hill House, turn things and people around it into curiosities? What lies behind and beyond the spectacular surfaces of the cabinets? What is the exact nature of the Gothic horror Otranto and Strawberry Hill House created for its eighteenth-‐century as well as the present readers/visitors? Peter Lindfield, ‘Antiquarian furniture and the ‘Modern Gothic’ in eighteenth-century Britain: an unexplored connection’ University of Kassel & University of St. Andrews; pnl@st-‐andrews.ac.uk Furniture history is often considered a niche subject removed from the main discipline of Art History, and one that has little to do with the output of painters, sculptors and architects. This paper, however, connects the key intellectual, artistic and architectural debates in ‘the arts’ in the eighteenth century with the commissioning of architecture and furniture. An interest in the Picturesque and the construction of neo-‐Gothic buildings furnished with Gothic interiors throughout the second half of the eighteenth century demonstrates the sustained popularity of the aesthetic at a time of fleeting fashions. This evidence runs contrary to current scholarship which frames mid-‐eighteenth-‐century Gothic as niche aesthetic (and, indeed, a potential symbol of homosexuality).

Notwithstanding the expanding corpus of scholarly monographs dealing with individual cabinet-‐makers or furniture-‐making in geographic areas, little attention has been paid to exploring



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how Gothic furniture was conceptualised and what it meant to furnish a room, or house, in the style. Interpretations of Gothic were not static but developed continually between 1740 and 1820 with the increasingly systematic and accurate investigation of medieval architecture. It changed from a superficial grasp of ornament under William Kent and Batty Langley in the early eighteenth century to a complex understanding of structure and appropriate ornament in the 1820s. No attempt has yet been made to place the design and evolution of Gothic furniture within the blossoming context of eighteenth-‐ and nineteenth-‐century Gothic architecture, nor to trace its connection with the sentimental position of ‘the Gothic’ in the period.

I will address this shortcoming by connecting the intellectual and architectural concerns of the time with the stylistic and material characteristics of Gothic furniture. The paper explores the implications of the sudden interest in medievalism c.1740, and establishes the reasons for Gothic’s popularity. Unpublished manuscript designs for furniture at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, in addition, will be used to identify a hitherto overlooked trend for glossing medieval furniture with overt Gothic decoration in the mid-‐eighteenth century. I argue that, like classical architecture, Gothic’ in the 1750s was viewed as – and indeed based upon – a simplified vocabulary of motifs. Lucy Linforth, ‘Scott and Lewis: Radical Conservatives, or Conservative Radicals?’ University of Edinburgh; [email protected] This paper engages with the works of two giants of early nineteenth-‐century literature: Matthew Lewis, author of the novel The Monk (1796), and the literary lion of early nineteenth-‐century, Walter Scott. For the purposes of this paper, and as my current thesis research concentrates upon the concept of Scottish ‘Gothic’ Literature, this paper will read Scott as a ‘Gothic’ writer, whose novels exhibit extensive interplay of history, tradition, medieval lore and supernatural machinery. This paper seeks to re-‐examine the typecasting of these two writers: as a literary master, and an opposing (‘Monk’) monster; as the ‘conservative’ and ‘famous’ Scott, compared to the ‘radical’ and ‘infamous’ Lewis. This study suggests that, under closer biographical and critical inspection, these distinctions do not hold, and are potentially detrimental to our understanding of both writers. Following Julian Meldon D’Arcy’s recent radical new reading of the ‘dissonant discourses’ underlying the Waverley novels, this study will explore the concept of a ‘radical’ presence in Scott’s work, and will explore how this presence coexists and contrasts with his evident personal conservative conviction. Correspondingly, this study will explore the chaotic, indistinct and far from radical personal politics of Lewis – a plantation and slave-‐owner, a hesitant anti-‐abolitionist-‐ and seeks to consider his work in the context of this ambiguity. This study therefore hopes to illuminate the radical and the conservative ambiguity present in the work of both Scott and Lewis. Patricia MacCormack, ‘The Nephilim and The Necronomic’ Anglia Ruskin University; [email protected] The biblical apocryphal work The Book of Enoch tells of the falling of the rebel angels, The Watchers, to the daughters of man, to whom they taught knowledges of all kinds. Their cursed offspring were the Nephilim, a race of giants wiped out by the deluge but who have since been associated with alien interventionists, Annunaki and an ancient race of now extinct humans. Resonant with this historical revision of human genealogy is the work of HP Lovecraft, who names the Elder Gods and Ancient Ones as superior cosmic beings from antediluvian times. Lovecraft speaks of the grimoire The Necronomicon a modern form of apocryphal text which summons these dreamed and dreaming beings. In the 1980s Fields of the Nephilim emerged from the goth music scene with their own apocryphal mythos that coalesced these two arenas into a unique emergence of gothic smoke and dust miasma performance with a precise and detailed system of reference that also included Crowley and Chaos magick in a sophisticated play between hybrid and unlike discourses loosely associated with gothic thought but devoid of posturing. Like the Nephilim and Necronomic monsters



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– half fallen angel, half human, teratological gods – Nephilim were an aberrant series of what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘unnatural participations’. This paper will explore Fields of the Nephilim in the context of their sophisticated involuting of occultism, religion, fantasy fiction and goth music through Deleuze and Guattari’s ecosophical ethics of sorcery and demonology of A Thousand Plateaus to show the formation of a unique genre which includes music, subculture, philosophy, biblical studies, literature, revisionist archaeology, conspiracy and fantasy that could be named ‘The Nephilim and The Necronomic’. Maureen McCue, ‘Prints and Profits: Samuel Rogers’ Italy and its Gothic tales’ Bangor University; [email protected] This paper examines how Samuel Rogers developed and incorporated a series of Gothic tales and illustrations in order to turn his unsuccessful book Italy into an international bestseller. Although British authors often set their Gothic stories in Italy, Rogers’s use of the Gothic is intricately tied to a number of other market desires, most especially for illustrations, textual variety and a particular image of Italy that was at once foreign and familiar. By exploring how Rogers’s Gothic visual and verbal additions answer these market forces, I argue that Rogers’s text enabled middle-‐class readers to consume art, literature and Italy in new ways, while displaying a high level of cultural capital. Neil McRobert, ‘It’s Only A Movie: Found-Footage Cinema, Trauma, and the Gothic Manuscript’ University of Stirling; [email protected] The discovery of secret or sinister documents has been a crucial Gothic device since the genre’s inception in Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Countless subsequent texts have used the trope to either propel the plot or as a framing device for the narrative itself. The latter function allows the author to complicate any easy distinction between fiction and historical truth, and thus augment the text’s potential to terrify.

The use of this device has been renewed cinematically in the emergence of found-‐footage cinema. Beginning with Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and reaching huge cultural recognition with The Blair With Project (1999), found-‐footage has exploded in popularity recently. However, the genre has been surprisingly unrecognised by Gothic scholarship, especially considering the remarkable frequency (often verging on exclusivity) with which the aesthetic is applied to Gothic effect. This paper aims to recognise the trend as a primarily Gothic phenomenon by considering how it is indebted to the narrative structures of canonical Gothic fiction, and equally, by discussing the aesthetic similarity to contemporary trauma narratives: in particular the way in which these horror films rely on an association between documentary and anxiety in post-‐9/11 culture.

The paper will first provide a brief summary of the salient texts in this new genre, before applying a Gothic framework to elicit the connections between found-‐footage cinema and the Gothic tradition. The latter half of the paper will discuss the manner in which the aesthetic is key to a form of terroristic narrative that, though acutely contemporary, relies, like Walpole’s inaugural text, on the disruption of any safe boundary between reality and fiction. David McWilliam, ‘Sagacious Scapegoat: Marilyn Manson’s Subversion of the Moral Panic Surrounding the Columbine High School Massacre’ Lancaster University; [email protected] Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who carried out the massacre at Columbine High School on 20th April 1999, were associated with the Goth subculture by media commentators in what became a moral panic about its transgressive influence on American teenagers. René Girard’s observation in Violence and the Sacred (1972) that a crisis in the community requires a sacrificial victim suggests that the void left by the killers’ suicides meant that a scapegoat needed to be found. Despite neither shooter being Goths ‘in the sense that most members of the subculture understood it’, as Catherine Spooner



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notes in Fashioning Gothic Bodies (2004), or fans of his music, Marilyn Manson became the preeminent folk devil representing this perceived threat to American suburbia. This paper will consider how, unlike the typically powerless folk devil identified by Stanley Cohen in Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), Manson subverted the negative media attention to use it as a platform for a countercultural response. To do so, Manson first implicated the wider community in his article ‘Columbine: Whose Fault is It?’ (1999) for Rolling Stone, later suggesting that, rather than criticize the killers, people should have listened to them in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2002). Christine Mangan, ‘Haunting the Text: The Femme Covert in Eliza Parsons’ The Castle of Wolfenbach’ University College, Dublin; [email protected] Eighteenth-‐century English marriage laws required women to assume the role of the femme covert, a status that not only upheld encoded gender ideology but also sanctioned the perpetuation of marital abuse. Relegated to a subordinate position within marriage, women were often left without a way to defend themselves against the physical and mental cruelty of their husbands. This paper will examine embedded narratives of violence within Eliza Parsons’ The Castle of Wolfenbach, with particular emphasis on how her engagement with the Gothic makes visible the injustices women suffered under the laws of coverture. Forced into a patriarchal marriage, Victoria is confined within ever-‐diminishing spaces as she is moved from castle to bedroom to closet, eventually culminating with the realization of her body as the true source of limitation. However, it is not until her husband circulates false claims of her demise, ordering her to ‘haunt’ the Castle of Wolfenbach, that Victoria becomes the literalization of the femme covert. Thus, Parsons’ text is suggestive of needed reform, insisting that patriarchal marriage not only imprisons women, but also subsumes them entirely, until they are nothing more than ghosts left to haunt the domestic space they are confined within. Victoria Margree, ‘(Other) Worldly Goods: Gothic Inheritances in the Ghost Stories of Charlotte Riddell’ University of Brighton; [email protected] Literary scholars are increasingly recognising the importance of the ghost story to Victorian women writers, who were the major producers of this fiction, and who often made use of it figuratively to explore the ‘ghostly’ situation of women in a male-‐dominated culture. This paper will consider the fiction of Charlotte Riddell, who, following in the tradition of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, used the ghost story to explore questions of property and wealth. Her collection Weird Stories came out in 1882, a time when the relation of women to possession, both material and spiritual, was central to legal and scientific debates. Riddell’s stories display a profound interest in the legal arrangements around inheritance, tenancy and debt. She employs the figure of the ghost as a way of enquiring into the spiritual dimensions of property ownership, asking under what conditions possession is legitimate and the use of wealth just. In her fictions it is usually not the supernatural that produces Gothic effect (her ghosts are usually benevolent) but human relationships. I shall argue that her tales point to a Gothic underside to Victorian domestic normality, in which social and economic arrangements produce forms of unfreedom and abuse for both women and men. Maria Mellins St. Mary’s University College; [email protected] Richard Mills St. Mary’s University College; [email protected]



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Rachel Mizsei Ward, ‘Raging against the dying of the light: The Space Gothic of the Warhammer 40K universe’ University of East Anglia; r.mizsei-‐[email protected] The Warhammer 40K universe is a science fantasy setting created the British games company, Games Workshop in 1987. The setting has become a successful transmedia universe, appearing in wargames, tabletop role-‐playing games, novels, computer games, and an animated film. Although science fantasy, with many typical science fiction tropes such as space travel, aliens and advanced technology; the setting heavily exploits Gothic themes and visual motifs.

There are multiple Gothic themes in Warhammer 40K. Human civilisation, called the Imperium, is in its end times and can no longer make the advanced technology it relies on, or even repair what still remains. As a result technology is equated with magic, to be used with the proper prayers, and knowledge of how it works is forbidden to all but ‘tech-‐priests’. One of the most iconic figures in the Warhammer universe is the Space Marine. Although direct decedents of the Emperor and considered elite humans, they have become degraded specimens of humanity through genetic modification and biomechanical implants. Some Space Marines, due to their genetic heritage are driven mad, such as the Blood Angels who develop uncontrollable bloodlust or an incurable insanity called Black Rage. However, despite their monstrous natures, they act as humanity’s defence against alien monsters. A key aspect in the look and feel of Warhammer 40K is the use of Gothic visual motifs. Spaceships are decorated with pointed gothic arches and flying buttresses, while the winged skull is a key motif of the Space Marines. This paper will consider the gothic elements in the long running and successful Warhammer 40K universe, which a special focus on the gaming elements of the franchise. Andalee Motranec, ‘Gothic Elements and Crime Fiction in Dracula and Frankenstein’ California State University, Fullerton; [email protected] The development of the gothic setting, build up of sensory details, and element of mystery in Dracula and Frankenstein have created stylistic devices adopted for the crime fiction genre and diaspora of literary pop culture in the gothic fiction sphere. An analysis of both texts in relation to the concerns of crime fiction shows the struggle of the genre to combat the conflicts between details leading to definitive truth through the use of the scientific method, the relation that the reader has in determining validity of the presented facts, and the plausibility of the paranormal or myth being linked to truth. The unknown is explored by presenting a fictional "known" in both pieces and analyzed in a scientific way through a fictional gothic style where these scenario seem plausible -‐-‐ the imagination poses as the only plausible place for analysis. In this way the texts link themselves to modern themes through a broad reach of religion, myth, and racism to influence popular modern authors into innovative recreations of the genre Stoker and Shelley embraced. Zara Naghizadeh, ‘Horace Walpole’s “Guardianship of Embryos and Cockleshells”’ Natural History Museum, London; [email protected] In his will, Sir Hans Sloane named Horace Walpole as trustee to his enormous collection: a treasure trove of natural and artificial [cultural] rarities and one of the most significant collections in the Western world. Yet in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, Walpole appears nothing more than vexed about his appointment. One might wonder why Walpole, a man who exhibited such an astonishing array of curios at Strawberry Hill House, was so exasperated about his trusteeship. Even though Sloane’s collection contained a range of natural history specimens, antiquities, ethnographic material, manuscripts, books, prints and drawings, it was that very first group, the objects from natural history, to which Walpole appeared to have entirely directed his vitriol. Whether in jest or in earnest, Walpole’s wisecracks in his letter to Mann point towards a very poignant difference in eighteenth-‐century ways of ‘viewing’ natural and artificial museum objects. What exactly was it that



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made natural history collections such objects of pastiche and satire, prone to literary and visual parody? This paper will use the relationship between Walpole and Sloane to investigate the dichotomy between art and natural history collections of the eighteenth century and highlight some surprising finds from the NHM’s Sloane collection that might have been equally at home in Walpole’s residence. Marta Nowicka, ‘Gothic Ghosts from Horace Walpole to Muriel Spark’ University of Gdansk; [email protected] Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto laid the foundations for the Gothic genre out of which emerged the ghost story. Since then numerous authors have been eagerly incorporating not only Gothic elements but also preternatural apparitions into their fiction. This has run parallel with a debate concerning the problem of the literary presentation of spectral beings as discussed by, for example, Andrew Lang and H.P. Lovecraft. The aim of the paper, thus, is to present the evolution of literary ghosts from early Gothic novels to contemporary examples. Selected works created by authors such as Oscar Wilde, Arthur Machen, Elizabeth Bowen and A.N.L. Munby are taken under scrutiny. A special emphasis is put on Muriel Spark’s oeuvre. Spark not only frequently uses Gothic conventions, but also greatly empowers her ghosts; in two of her short stories she uses ‘ghost narrative’, employed also by Alice Sebold in The Lovely Bones, in “The Hothouse by the East River” she gives her ghostly apparitions a chance to re-‐live their lives. This analysis, focused solely on examples taken from British fiction, not only presents the evolution and changes, from restricted spectral beings to human-‐like free spirits, which a character of a ghost underwent. It also attempts to present various reasons behind incorporating preternatural apparitions into fiction, especially created around the Second World War, highlighting their entertaining as well as therapeutic values. Brittney Ostlie, ‘A History almost at Variance with the Possibilities of Later Day Belief: The Catholic Revival in Dracula’ University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN; [email protected] It has frequently been observed that in Dracula Bram Stoker constructs a series of rigid binaries that ultimately collapse into each other. One might even argue that the apparently concrete binaries established at the beginning of the novel are deconstructed in the course of its reading with us, as readers, left either deeply superstitious of the text or reliant on that “faith” of which Van Helsing constantly reminds us. I want to reconsider that “faith” and the collapsing of the English/Foreign and, more importantly, Protestant/Catholic binary. Further, I also want to suggest that an inherently superstitious atmosphere of Catholicism that pervades Dracula stems from a Protestant anxiety about the Catholic revival that was very much part of the discourse in Victorian England. Religious passion undergirds Dracula, a text in which the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism is significantly blurred. Catholicism becomes a history almost at variance with Protestant belief. Lance Pettitt St. Mary’s University College; [email protected] Cristina Pérez Arranz, ‘The Vampire as a Femme Fatale: A comparison between American and Romanian literature’ Universidad Computense de Madrid; [email protected] The archetype of the vampire as a femme fatale has been studied throughout history, since its origins from a pure anthropological perspective, having wide representations in every kind of art since early years. For this paper I will examine the works of two different authors: the American Edgar Allan Poe and his work “Ligeia” (1838) and the Romanian Mircea Eliade and his work “Domnisoara Christina” (1936).



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Using both works as a principal focus of analysis, I will explain how the myth of the vampire (and more specifically, the strigoii, the female vampire) originated in Romania and how it transcended to the postmodernism by the hand of the romanian mythographer Eliade. I will analyse why and how he relied more on the canonical views of the vampire rather than the culture and folklore of the country where he was born. The Spanish composer Luis de Pablo presented the opera “Domnisoara Christina” in the Royal Theatre of Madrid, Spain, in 2001. Some images of the performance will be shown, and I will also comment on the music, the staging and the characterization of the actors.

To help me in my presentation I will use work from both writers, comparing and contrasting them, and showing or reading excerpts to illustrate my theories. It will also be helpful to comment on some of the theoretical ideas on this subject exposed by Poe in his “Philosophy of Composition” and Eliade’s “The Myth of the Eternal Return: Archetypes and Repetition”. I will give evidence of why the two women described in both narrations can be classified as a femme fatale, what similarities can be found between them and what differences. The fact that the two authors come from very different origins, America as opposed to eastern Europe, and their works have been written with almost a century of difference, helps the analysis of how the figure of the femme fatale has changed but also remained constant throughout time. Ashleigh Pyke, ‘Paving the road for men of brighter talents: the initiation of the Gothic dialogue’ University of Queensland; [email protected] In the prefaces to their fictional texts, and in their theoretical and critical writings, authors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century reflect upon their participation in and contribution to the discursive site that is the Gothic. Gothic literary texts are revealed as having been intended to revise their predecessors, not necessarily by building upon them, but by initiating textual dialogues with them to negotiate the generic space. This level of critical engagement and interaction stemmed from an acute awareness of the emerging nature of professional writing, and of eighteenth century politics of reading and reception. Gothic authors used to their advantage developments in publication and circulation for the construction of literary networks and the collective creation of their gothic world. Therefore, while the Gothic aesthetically constituted a rebellion against classical orthodoxy, a social element can also be observed in its emergence. Recognition of this collaborative approach brings into question the understanding of the Gothic as an “other” and its conception as oppositional, eclectic or isolated. By canvasing the exchanges between early gothic authors, including Walpole, Reeve, Lewis, Shelley and Maturin, this paper aims to assess whether the Gothic was truly reactionary or genuinely subversive, and to understand the construction or makeup of contemporary and subsequent notions of the gothic genre and aesthetic. Juith Rahn, ‘From hideous monstrosity to glittering beauty: the changing perception of the body of the vampire from the 19th to the 21st centuries’ Rheinische Friedrich-‐Willhelms-‐Universiät, Bonn; judith.rahn@uni-‐bonn.de The image of vampirism is as ambiguous as the idea of the Gothic itself. Gothic literature is trapped between mutually dependant phenomena: questioning moral and social values and the absolute power of reason, yet implicitly reinforcing the normative social order by denominating deviations from the norm. Similarly, the vampiric body – whilst showing clear signs of divergence from the characteristic human body and nature – exhibits an air of elusive familiarity due to its physical resemblance to the human form. It distorts social taboos like the fragmentation of the body, sexual desire, the fear of death and the wish for immortality. Through this perverted representation of humanity, the figure of the vampire unites the fear of the uncanny with repressed sexual and social taboos (cf. Sigmund Freud’s essay ‘The Uncanny’ [1919]).

While in the 19th century, John Polidori’s depiction of the vampire Lord Ruthven in his novella The Vampyre (1818) is still very much that of a gentleman, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) portrays a much more inhuman, monster-‐like creature. In the 20th and 21st century works such as Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series Twilight (2005-‐



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2008) and Mary Janice Davidson’s romantic parody Undead and Unwed (2004) shape the idea of the vampire as a sexually desirable para-‐human being with an established social and cultural society. Brian Ridgers St. Mary’s University College, London; [email protected] Fiona Robertson St. Mary’s University College, London; [email protected] Shannon Rollins, ‘Recalibrating the Past: The Multi-millennial Ramifications of Steampunk’ University of Edinburgh; [email protected] As an aesthetic and subcultural movement, Steampunk engages simultaneously with contemporary reality and that of the nineteenth century. It would seem that the term 'Steampunk' would be inherently separate from the designation of Gothic, due in part to the aggression, animosity, and anarchistic sentiments consistently displayed by the original Punk movement of the 1970s toward any culture, counter or otherwise. Rather, in this proposed paper I would establish that, following the definition of Gothic laid out in the call for papers, Steampunk embodies the description 'aesthetic rebellion against a classical orthodoxy'. I will argue that Steampunk is, in fact, a combination of Romanticism, Gothic Revival, and Punk; when fused into one, it subverts the contemporary plane of reality through the incorporation of nineteenth century aesthetic with the politics and attitude of twentieth century Punk. With a focus on the sublime, the Industrial, unorthodoxy, and anarchy, Steampunk invents an anachronistic representation of a past that will never be and a future entirely of its own design. In 1977 the Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’ proclaimed 'there is no future', but through a dissection of Steampunk art and artifacts, there is illumination and a retrospective, alternative subcultural future is born. Andrew Seeger, ‘The Gothic in the Contemporary Fiction of Mark Z Danielewski and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’ [email protected] Ruiz Zafón’s novels – The Shadow of the Wind (2001) and The Angel’s Game (2004) – combine many of the traditional elements that readers have come to expect in a Gothic tale, like threatening mysteries, hidden passages, and delicate, oft-‐fainting heroines. The hero in each novel fits that archetype that David De Vore has described as “as sort of archetype… a protagonist, usually isolated either voluntarily or involuntarily”, and the villains in each “the epitome of evil, either by… [their] own fall from grace, or by some implicit malevolence”. As in many Gothic narratives, setting is as important as are characters and plot; the historical setting of Barcelona in the 1920s and 30s, as well as mysterious locales like the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, create a mysterious world. The novels also cross the threshold into the supernatural realm with characters who don’t seem to age and who may or may not be the devil.

Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) takes many of the same Gothic elements, but it twists and molds them into a work that is as labyrinthine as the bizarre area inside the house that the characters explore (a space between a suddenly appearing door that, like the Tardis, seems to be bigger on the inside than the outside – in this case, much, much bigger). The supernatural in this novel sits somewhere on the border of science fiction and horror, as well as the border of reality and unreality.

My paper will explore how Gothic elements are used by both of these bestselling writers; how one uses a more conventional approach, while the other takes more innovative steps; and how both writers create narratives that keep the genre fresh and exciting.



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John M. Skutlin, ‘Turning Goth in Japan: Behind the Scenes of Goth Subculture’s Japanese Localization The Chinese University of Hong Kong; [email protected] The dark corners of the Goth scenes in the U.S. and Europe continue to be explored in terms of subcultural theory and ideas of rebellion, and while Tokyo is the dark core of Goth in Asia, with the exception of GothLoli fashion and J-‐rock studies, the Japanese localization of Goth remains largely shrouded in shadows. Rooted in paradoxical rebelliousness in the Enlightenment period, the Gothic tradition is reflected in the modern Goth movement. But are aesthetics of rebellion the same across cultures? In Japan, dark fashion and inverted crosses may be accepted merely as unique fashion choices, while the smallest of tattoos or body piercings could be viewed as major transgressions against the proper order. How have the supposedly subversive and rebellious qualities of Goth been commodified differently from the West among individuals in Tokyo? Based on ethnographic participant observation and interviews with those who have embraced the Goth scene in that city, this paper attempts to answer that question by shedding light on the unique appropriation and assimilation of Goth music, fashion, and lifestyles, as well as how the subculture’s specific manifestations and permutations have helped to shape the cultural identities of those who create and participate in it. Allan Simmons, ‘”The Horror! The Horror!”: Modern Gothic’ (Plenary 4) St. Mary’s University College, London: [email protected] Andrew Small, ‘Gothic and Surrealism: Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970) University for the Creative Arts, Farnham; [email protected] In this paper I shall look at a Czechoslovak ‘horror’ film called Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) which is based on a book of the same name by Vitĕzslav Nezval written in 1935. The book and the film can be read as a Surrealist influenced reworking of certain strands within the tradition of the Gothic serial novel; both present a dream-‐like narrative broken into instalments involving various fantasised scenarios, some sado-‐masochistic in character, others incestuous, in which characters not only change position in relation to these scenarios co-‐ordinates, but occasionally change into other characters. The films vampire for example changes into variously a priest, a polecat and the central female characters’ lost father. I am interested in using the psychoanalytic idea of fantasy to look at how the film represents the central female characters desires, in order to focus on the role played by staging, in the setting out of her reveries. I would like to explore the way in which the film presents an oneiric succession of fantasised scenarios in which the staging of desire, its mise-‐en-‐scene, becomes particularly significant for the way in which the film represents unconscious ideas, fantasies of seduction and ideas about sexual difference. Michael Snodin, ‘The Castle of Otranto and the Topography of Strawberry Hill’ (Plenary 2) Chair, Strawberry Hill Trust; [email protected] Kristen Sollee, ‘Cloak and Swagger: Gothic Drag in 21st-Century Pop and Hip Hop’ [email protected] In stark contrast to the widespread popularity of Gothic fiction in the 18th and 19th centuries , goth fashion in the 20th century was arguably relegated to subculture. During the last decade, however, both hip hop artists and pop stars have begun to appropriate goth aesthetics in their performances and music videos, while embodying iconic Gothic tropes from the dandy and the double to the medical and the monstrous. After going goth, however, such imagery is discarded, and it’s “on to the next one” to quote Jay-‐Z’s Gothic turn in a music video of the same name. Developed in the 1980s with inspiration from literature of centuries past, these fashions now wax and wane in a reflexive cycle of drag that is put on and taken off at will. Without regard to continuity, authenticity,



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or group affiliation, the unlikely incorporation of goth aesthetics into hip hop and pop music culture ultimately proves Catherine Spooner’s assertion in Fashioning Gothic Bodies, that ‘there is no natural or authentic body in Gothic fashion, but only socially and sartorially constructed bodies.’ Rebecca Styler, ‘The Gothic Child as Existentialist Symbol: The Counterpoint to Romantic Innocence’ University of Lincoln; [email protected] Through the nineteenth century, the child was a figure on which were projected competing ideas about human nature in its original condition before moral, intellectual and cultural interventions had shaped it into something quite different. An optimistic view of human nature as essentially good shaped the idealized child of Romanticism, which had a long legacy in Victorian and Edwardian legacy, in which the child symbolised authentic humanity, and a source of emotional and moral salvation to corrupted adults.

This paper argues that an alternative model of childhood existed that formed a pessimistic counterpoint to this ideal – the Gothic child. The recurring figure of a child who is alienated, bewildered, and obsessed by death, is present from Mary Robinson’s ‘All Alone’ – a clear reposte to the Wordsworthian child of nature – through Victorian descendants such as Paul in Dickens’ Dombey and Son, Jude in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, and some of the ‘gipsy’ children of Victorian poetry. This is not the demonic child of twentieth-‐century Gothic imaginings, nor a child who is monstrous due to social corruption, but a haunted, morbid, figure whose natural condition is emotional exile from his or her material and social setting. He or she is viewed with horror by adults, not because the child itself is frightening, or a symbol of moral evil, but because s/he embody in the raw the philosophical bewilderment which the adult had found strategies to suppress.

Gothic has often been considered to be the ‘dark side’ of Romanticism, in its explorations of emotion and imagination in terms of disturbance rather than delight, but this perspective has never been applied to the Romantic child, to reveal its tragic counterpart as an emblem of philosophical pessimism. Andrew Teverson, ‘Blood Relations: Salman Rushdie and Anish Kapoor’s Gothic Nights’ Kingston University; [email protected] In 2006 Salman Rushdie and Anish Kapoor collaborated on a sculpture entitled Blood Relations. Supplementary to the sculpture, Rushdie also produced a piece of text, partly incorporated into the sculpture, with the slightly longer title, ‘Blood Relations: An Interrogation of The Arabian Nights’. This paper examines Rushdie and Kapoor’s engagement with the Nights, as a complex, historically stratified and trans-‐cultural text that bridges medieval Arabic tradition, European Orientalism, and contemporary post-‐modern fiction. It also examines Rushdie and Kapoor’s use of gothic motifs in their repositioning of the Nights, focusing in particular upon their employment of tropes of dismemberment, fragmentation, extreme violence, and boundary transgression. Ultimately, I argue, that the gothic Nights that emerges in this sculpture has two distinct, and to some extent conflicting, functions: on the one hand the Nights is characterised as a violent misogynist fiction, that revels in the destruction of women and testifies to a history of aggressive cultural appropriation; on the other, it becomes the prototype of modern libertarian narratives in which the artist-‐hero (Scheherazade) uses storytelling to resist atrocious tyranny; and in which a mobile and liminal textuality becomes the basis for the contestation of absolute boundaries between cultures. Frances Tomlin, ‘“Where the bones of the Earth show through”: Fiction and Scotland's Gothic Wilderness’ University of Edinburgh; [email protected] Contemporary writers in Scotland seem to be drawn to the Gothic elements of the landscape much as the tourists are, but in a way that hints at an admiration reaching deeper than sight-‐seeing,



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beyond Loch Ness, Glen Coe or Ben Nevis. Fantastical but real, remote yet accessible; for the fiction writer the Scottish wilderness becomes a place of fascination and possibility. In this paper I will demonstrate the ways in which contemporary Scottish authors utilise, manipulate or subvert the Scottish Gothic stereotype. Whether it be Alan Warner's insane island-‐dwellers; Iain Banks' sinister fortresses or James Robertson's dealings with the Devil, in each case the Scottish landscape stands as a bleak and dramatic backdrop, played upon by writers as it is by the Tourist Board, drawing us in with an uneasy awe; challenging our comfortable modern lifestyles with its unshakeable impassivity. But is it possible for this landscape -‐ the castles and the forests, the mountains and the lochs – to give something back to the writing, to add depth and complexity? Is it still possible to approach Gothic Scotland in unexpected and innovative ways? Or has it lost its mystery? And, crucially, in our fast-‐paced modern existence, why should we care? Serena Trowbridge, ‘By the blue taper’s trembling light’: Graveyard Poetry and the Gothic’ Birmingham City University; [email protected] The slippery term Gothic is rarely applied to poetry, and when it is, the claim is frequently unsustainable, or at least unexplained. Certainly there is virtually no critical material which considers the nature of poetry and Gothic. It is interesting that such significant manifestations of Gothic have received little critical attention, since certain formal aspects of poetry might make it particularly fruitful for Gothic. This paper will explore the possibility that poetry is a form positioned to manifest elements of Gothic, with particular reference to the graveyard poets. In its reflective, psychologically complex subject matter, poetry frequently provides rich material for Gothic, and indeed the genre draws upon the work of the graveyard poets, such as Gray, Young, Blair and Parnell. While these poets’ work may have been an inspiration for Gothic in their grisly subject matter, the poems themselves bear further investigation as early examples of Gothic. This paper will therefore examine the development of a Gothic aesthetic in poetry which in turn provided a significant influence for later Gothic novels, focusing particularly on Thomas Parnell’s ‘A Night-‐Piece on Death’ and the novels of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. Nóra Veszprémi, ’Taming the Terrors of the Past: Gothic Imagery and the Representation of National History in Nineteenth-Century Hungary’ Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest; [email protected] In early-‐nineteenth-‐century Hungary, then part of the Austrian Empire, Gothic imagery often functioned as a signifier of the national – in contrast to universal, international Neoclassicism –, and played a crucial role in the popularisation of national history. The harmony of national and Gothic was, however, disrupted as a new concept of national art gradually gained prominence. National art was expected to address the nation as a whole, which implied that interpretations had to be standardised and fixed. The aesthetics of the Gothic, on the other hand, relied on obscurity, uncertainty, and the activity of the individual’s imagination in filling in the voids – allowing for multiple interpretations. Once the paradigm of national art, the Gothic thus became its potential subverter. From the 1840s, critics usually described the excitement offered by Gothic imagery as superficial and vulgar. The Gothic came to be seen as alien to Hungarian character, and was

associated with ʻGermanness’ – a quality to be strictly avoided in a culture that sought to define its own, singular characteristics within the Austrian Empire. Nevertheless, although suppressed in mainstream interpretations, the Gothic did not disappear from depictions of national history. My paper will explore some revealing examples.



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Christine Vial-Kayser, ‘The Gothic Flavour of the Chapman Brothers’ [email protected] Famous among the group of the Young British Artists for their grinning images, the Chapman brothers also distinguish themselves from the rest of the group by their usage of imaginary figures, theatrical installations and dark narratives. Their objects subvert social consensus about morality and aesthetics by producing children dummies performing sexual activities in dark bushes, adding Mickey Mouse face on authentic Goya’s prints of the series Disasters of War or setting up a giant model of a concentration camp wherein Nazi miniature soldiers are engaged in orgiastic activities. Their use of macabre installations to unsettle the spectator’s expectations about the Good or the Bad seems to be in line with William Blake’s illustrations in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and to share a common aim to subvert the social order in order to reenergize it. Ronja Vieth, ‘The Irony of Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto’ Independent Scholar; [email protected] In my paper I argue both that Walpole's "first gothic novel" was and was not, in fact, a rebellion against classical orthodoxy. He wrote the novella as a response to a political intrigue that directly affected his family, as his own cousin lost his post as Groom of the Bedchamber as a result to their position on free speech. If one considers the gothic genre to be a form of political rebellion, Walpole chose, or rather inaugurated, the genre in an a failed attempt at satire to criticize current political events; however, despite, or possibly because of, its failure as satire, the novella that utilizes those fancy and burlesque prompts later adopted as staple ingredients of the gothic is Walpole's and later authors' elected means of effecting a change in the current political climate. In that regard, by becoming the choice of literary genre of Walpole, who was active in the House of Commons for twenty-‐seven years, in order to induce political change, the gothic has indeed been appropriated by the order it seeks to resist. Brittany Warman ,‘Awakening the Darkness: Toward a Poetics of Gothic Fairy Tales’ Ohio State University; [email protected] Despite the nearly omnipresent insistence on a return to the “dark” past of fairy tales in both contemporary literature and popular culture, relatively little work has been done on the connections between fairy tales and the Gothic mode. Why does the frightening uncertainty of the Gothic work so well with the ‘happily ever after’ of the fairy tale and how does this blending subvert the mainstream conceptions associated with these two aesthetics? In this presentation I argue that traditional fairy tales, long bowdlerized and relegated to the nursery, frequently exemplify the terror, passion, and excess characteristic of the Gothic. The paper draws in particular on examples from the versions of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White” by Charles Perrault and the Grimms to examine key Gothic issues present in traditional fairy tales such as transgression, haunted space, the double, magic, death/sleep, and the uncanny. I end by exploring the intertextual presence of these stories in several major Gothic works and then examining how the Gothic mode appears in recent sleeping maiden tale retellings. When combined, the complex and contested aesthetics of the Gothic sub-‐genre and the fairy tale produce a unique poetics of both darkness and light. Nadia van der Westhuizen, ‘Happily Ever Aftermath: Fairy Tales in Contemporary Gothic Fiction and Television’ Kingston University; [email protected] The immense popularity of the Gothic has not abated over time. It continues to manifest within a large range of cultural products, and one of the more common ‘vehicles’ for the Gothic today – the fairy tale adaptation – is currently saturating mass media. Classic versions of fairy tales have always had sinister elements, but contemporary re-‐imaginings unashamedly utilise the Gothic. Taking as an



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example the well-‐known character of ‘Red Riding Hood’, this paper explores the ways in which the Gothic/fairy tale hybrid has been used to modernise classic tropes and motifs. Stories such as Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’ paved the way for an exploration of a Gothic theme (‘the beast within’) situated in the fairy tale world. Today, such genre-‐hybrid werewolves are increasingly leaving the fairy tale forest to enter the concrete jungle of the present-‐day ‘real world’. Referencing several contemporary re-‐imaginings of the ‘Red Riding Hood’ tale set in modern suburbia or the city, including Tanith Lee’s short story ‘Blood Mantle’, the NBC television series ‘Grimm’ and the ABC television series ‘Once Upon a Time’, this paper examines the development of the Gothic within fairy tale adaptation, and assesses what the continuing demand for such ‘revitalised’ tales reveal about popular culture. Sarah Winter, ‘The Emergence and Political Origins of Gothic Melodrama’ University of Northumbria; [email protected] My research into Gothic melodrama explores how late-‐eighteenth and nineteenth-‐century British playwrights tapped into societies’ perceptions of enemy figures and anxieties. By using the overemphasis and clear expression of the melodramatic form, playwrights deployed the mode to express the large political concerns in Britain, which were triggered by the French Revolution. Earlier plays, such as George Colman the Younger’s The Iron Chest (1796), were adaptations of Gothic novels, and the use of melodrama to emphasize political parallels reveals a serious function of the genre, in contrast to more pejorative stereotypes, which have cloaked this political commentary. For example, Thomas Holcroft’s A Tale of Mystery (1802) was the first British play to be termed as a ‘melo-‐drame’; despite exhibiting many Gothic tropes, Holcroft chose to label it as a melodrama, rather than a ‘romance’, a subtitle used for many earlier Gothic dramas. The play taps into the tense political situation in Britain during the French Revolution, thus Holcroft’s conscious decision to use the term ‘a melo-‐drame’, to convey political concerns, suggests the effectiveness of the form in depicting these issues. Therefore, the intricate relationship between Gothic melodramas and their milieus indicates important cultural connections between the political and theatrical contexts. However, due to heavy censorship at the time of the plays’ performances, an initial attack on the form as an inferior theatrical mode, and stereotypical perceptions which developed over the nineteenth century, this serious and political layer of Gothic melodrama has been concealed. Mujadad Zaman, ‘The Revolution will not be Replicated: The “Poverty of Ideas” and the Gothic Revival in the 21st Century University of Cambridge, Mujadad Zaman; [email protected] This paper contends that the Gothic Revival of the 19th century stands as a watershed in British intellectual history in the way that we consider the nature and possibility of intellectual revival. The argument begins by explicating the reasons for the initial rise of the gothic, defined as a ‘consummate revival’ (combining the social, intellectual, aesthetic etc.) and coached within a narrative of morality. The question is then asked, ‘what made this revival possible?’ and why in the 21st century, with expanding university systems and intellectual cultures, a negative growth is occurring in the ways we consider the social efficacy of ideas and our ability to revive them. Here the Gothic Revival stands as a propitious example to address these issues by drawing on the broader problem of the fecundity of ideas. The latter part of the paper engages with how the Gothic Revival provides salient contemporary insights into the ways we relate to past intellectual traditions, as well as how we once more may make the connection between morality and civic duty to inform popular intellectual movements.



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Agata Zarzycka, ‘Seeing the Systematic Monster: Gothic Auto-Referentiality as a Means of Reconceptualizing the Holocaust Discourse in Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children’ University of Wrocław, Poland; [email protected] Combining Judith Halberstam's discussion of the connection between anti-‐Semitism and the Gothic monster with Niklas Luhmann's understanding of auto-‐referentiality as a means of any system's self-‐constitution, this presentation aims to argue that Ransom Riggs' 2011 novel for young adults, exemplifying a controversial practice of fictionalizing the Holocaust, actualizes rather than erases its historical and political significance.

Specifically, I will argue that the protagonist's power of seeing monsters can be interpreted as a manifestation of the Western culture's self-‐awareness in terms of its continuous, destabilizing entanglement with stereotypes. Thus, while the novel's extensive employment of fantasy inscribes it in the overall political ambivalence of the Gothic, it is thanks to the equally Gothic auto-‐referentiality that Miss Peregrine subverts, albeit only to some extent, the fictionalization of cultural discourses of the Holocaust by depicting that historical moment as an epitome of the ongoing problem of the Western culture's dependence on the discourse of Otherness.

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Gothic: Culture, subculture, counterculture · Gothic: Culture, subculture, counterculture ConferenceProgramme! (Please’see’from’p.7’onwards’for’abstracts’and’participants’’contactdetails)’