Reviews for The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction

The average rating for The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-19 00:00:00 Arik Williams So far, here is what I think: This book > Andrew Smith's Gothic Literature > Fred Botting's Gothic [Yes, I seem to be heading towards a ridiculous spree of reading every single Gothic lit companion book ever written and ranking them arbitrarily. No, I didn't intend to do this.] The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction is a dense book, with each chapter written by a different scholar. Some chapters, like the introductory chapter that serves to familiarize the reader with the complex history and evolution of Gothic literature, is rather procedural. On the other hand, there are chapters like the ones written by David Punter, Kelly Hurley and Fred Botting¹, which tend to delve into theoretical aspects of Gothic literature, from historical analysis to psychoanalysis and post-modern readings. The structure of the book easily permits the reader to choose whether they want to read the entire book or not, and it is possible to pick specific chapters to study without needing to read the rest. It is well-written, well-researched and I recommend it. ¹ The final chapter, written by Fred Botting, is my favorite in the book. It deals with post-modern incarnations of Gothic, and in my opinion, everything, from the prose and tone to the theory is leaps and bounds more fascinating than Botting's own companion book to Gothic literature.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-18 00:00:00 Grahame Woods The genre called "gothic" is notoriously shifting anyway, but of course I've always been curious about why it's called that (it never really seemed to have much to do with the visigoths). Well, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) was the first book officially termed "gothic." It was subtitled "a gothic story." It also pretended, at first, to be a found manuscript from the medieval time (I finally read The Castle of Otranto a couple years ago, and it's very fun). So what did the word "gothic" mean in the 1760s? Archaic, exotic, and Roman Catholic as opposed to Protestant. Catholic church architecture as opposed to the more modern classical style. One of the hallmarks of gothic as a genre is the past returning (and creepy old buildings) so all this makes sense. So it went on after Walpole, the term was taken up and run with, and led to the modern use of the word "gothic" which, now, is it's definition.