This Companion explores the many ways in which the Gothic has dispersed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and in particular how it has come to offer a focus for the tensions inherent in modernity. Fourteen essays by world-class experts show how the Gothic in numerous forms - including literature, film, television, and cyberspace - helps audiences both to distance themselves from and to deal with some of the key underlying problems of modern life. Topics discussed include the norms and shifting boundaries of sex and gender, the explosion of different forms of media and technology, the mixture of cultures across the western world, the problem of identity for the modern individual, what people continue to see as evil, and the very nature of modernity. Also including a chronology and guide to further reading, this volume offers a comprehensive account of the importance of Gothic to modern life and thought.

Gothic as a form of fiction-making has played a major role in Western culture since the late eighteenth century. In this volume, fourteen world-class experts on the Gothic provide thorough and revealing accounts of this haunting-to-horrifying type of fiction from the 1760s (the decade of The Castle of Otranto, the first so-called 'Gothic story') to the end of the twentieth century (an era haunted by filmed and computerized Gothic simulations). Along the way, these essays explore the connections of Gothic fictions to political and industrial revolutions, the realistic novel, the theatre, Romantic and post-Romantic poetry, nationalism and racism from Europe to America, colonized and post-colonial populations, the rise of film and other visual technologies, the struggles between 'high' and 'popular' culture, changing psychological attitudes towards human identity, gender and sexuality, and the obscure lines between life and death, sanity and madness. The volume also includes a chronology and guides to further reading.

This Companion offers a thorough overview of the diversity of the American Gothic tradition from its origins to the present.

This celebrated Gothic novel is explored through essays providing critical, historical, anthropological, philosophical and intellectual contexts that serve to further the understanding and appreciation of Dracula in all its many guises. Together the essays offer exciting new critical approaches to the most famous vampire in literature and film.

Fantasy is a creation of the Enlightenment, and the recognition that excitement and wonder can be found in imagining impossible things. From the ghost stories of the Gothic to the zombies and vampires of twenty-first-century popular literature, from Mrs Radcliffe to Ms Rowling, the fantastic has been popular with readers. Since Tolkien and his many imitators, however, it has become a major publishing phenomenon. In this volume, critics and authors of fantasy look at its history since the Enlightenment, introduce readers to some of the different codes for the reading and understanding of fantasy, and examine some of the many varieties and subgenres of fantasy; from magical realism at the more literary end of the genre, to paranormal romance at the more popular end. The book is edited by the same pair who produced The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (winner of a Hugo Award in 2005).

An overview of popular literature from the early nineteenth century to the present day from a historical and comparative perspective.

This collection provides a thorough representation of the early and ongoing conversation between Gothic and theory - philosophical, aesthetic, psychological and cultural.

Sixteen original essays by leading scholars on Mary Shelley's novel provide an introduction to Frankenstein and its various critical contexts.

This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the Lake and Cockney schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.

Covers the evolution of the legend over time and analyses the major themes that have emerged.