The Gothic Novel

Selected Books on the Gothic: Annotated Bibliography

Adapted from the Graduate Program at the University of Virginia 

Andriano, Joseph. Our Ladies of Darkness: Feminine Daemonology in Male Gothic Fiction. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.
A study of the beautiful and deadly female fiend (esp. supernatural and psychological frameworks) in 19th Century Gothic fiction.

Bernstein, Stephen. "Form and Ideology in the Gothic Novel." Essays in Literature 18 (1991): 151-65.
A materialist critique that uses Althusser and Foucault to read the Gothic novels as reproducing an ultimately conservative an anti-individualist ideology.

Blondel, Jacques. "On 'Metaphysical Prisons.'" Durham University Journal 32 (1971): 133-8.
Discusses literal and figurative imprisonment as recurrent themes in art and literature. Historicist approach.

Byrd, Max. "The Madhouse, the Whorehouse, and the Convent." Partisan Review 44 (1977): 268-78.
Describes madhouse, whorehouse and convent as largely equivalent structures that represent a metaphoric reigning in of unreason and human desire.

Fisher, Benjamin Franklin. The Gothic's Gothic: Study Aids to the Tradition of the Tale of Terror. New York: Garland, 1988.
General survey; arranged by author and by subject.

Foust, R.E. "Monstrous Image: Theory of Fantasy Antagonists." Genre 13 (1980): 441-53.
Uses theories of the uncanny to discuss the monstrous doubling in Frankenstein and Grendel. Psychoanalytic approach.

Frank, Frederick S. Gothic Fiction: A Master List of 20th Century Criticism and Research. Westport: Meckler, 1988.
General survey; arranged nationally, includes English, American, French, German.

-----. Guide to the Gothic: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
General survey; arranged nationally and with special subject areas.

Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny." The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. & trs. James Strachey. Vol. XVII. London: Hogarth, 1953, pp. 219-252.
Describes the uncanny experience in terms of doubling, death, and uncertainty about the distinction between reality and unreality. Treats the uncanny as both a psychological and a literary phenomenon.

-----. The Supernatural in Gothic Fiction: Horror, Belief and Literary Change. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992.
Discusses Otto's conceptions of the numinous and the (de)sacralization of the ideology of authors and audience.

Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
One of the founding works of feminist criticism in the U.S. Chapter on Frankenstein focuses on the influence of gender and Paradise Lost on Shelley's work.

Hallie, Philip. The Paradox of Cruelty. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1969.
Discusses themes of confinement and torture in Hogarth, Sade, the Gothics, and others.

Holland, Norman, and Leona Sherman. "Gothic Possibilities." New Literary History 8 (1977): 278-94.
The authors explore reader-response to the Gothic by discussing their own mental associations with Gothic symbols like the castle and the vulnerable heroine. Psychoanalytic approach.

Lyndenberg, Robin. "Gothic Architecture and Fiction: A Survey of Critical Responses." The Centennial Review 22 (1978): 95-109.
Compares critical responses to Gothic architecture and fiction.

Masse, Michelle. In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism, and the Gothic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
A psychoanalytic discussion of mostly 19th and 20th century Gothic, focusing on women's masochism as a trope.

Moers, Ellen. Literary Women,. New York: Anchor Press, 1977.
Another founding work of feminist criticism; where Moers coined the term

Ozolins, Aija. "Dreams and Doctrines: Dual Strands in Frankenstein." Science-Fiction Studies 2 (1975): 103-10.
Describes Frankenstein as simultaneously supernatural and didatic. Discusses dreams (both Mary Shelley's and Victor Frankenstein's) and the doppelganger theme.

Paulson, Ronald. "Gothic Fiction and the French Revolution." ELH 48 (1981): 532-54.
Analyzes the influence of the Terror within the major "horror-Gothic" novels. Historicist approach.

Porte, Joel. "In the Hands of an Angry God: Religious Terror in Gothic Fiction." The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism. Ed. G.R. Thompson. Washington State University Press, 1974.
Views Gothic literature as an expression and exploration of "religious malaise."

Punter, David. The Literature of Terror. London: Longman, 1980.
A chronological survey of the genre that begins with the "classic" Gothic novels but also extends into the 19th century. Historicist approach.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel." Publication of the Modern Language Association vol. 96:2 (1981): 255-270.
Refutes the widely held notion that sexuality in the Gothic is submerged; suggests that many overtly sexual tropes are manifested in surfaces, not depths.

Thornburg, Mary K. Patterson. The Monster in the Mirror: Gender and the Sentimental/Gothic Myth in Frankenstein. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987.
A discussion of the mythology informing Shelley's novel, locating the monster at the center of a masculine/feminine divide.

Tracy, Ann Blaisdell. Patterns of Fear in the Gothic Novel 1790-1830. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
A thesis that explores fear as it is found in the Gothic Novel (e.g. the unnameable, deceit, evil, demons, sin, disaster, etc.).

Varma, Devendra. The Gothic Flame. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966.
One of the first serious critical surveys of the Gothic genre; addresses such themes as the terror-horror split and "the quest for the numinous." Frequently cited in other secondary literature.

Varnado, S.L. "The Idea of the Numinous in Gothic Literature." The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism. Ed. G.R. Thompson. Washington State University Press, 1974.
A lengthy explanation of Rudolf Otto's theories on the numinous and the application thereof to various Gothic texts.

Voller, Jack G. "Todorov among the Gothics: Structuring the Supernatural Moment." Contours of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Eighth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Ed. Michele K. Langford. New York: Greenwood, 1994. 197-206.
Examines and revises Todorov's structural approach to the Gothic.

Williams, Anne. "Male Gothic." Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995.
Details the conventions of the male gothic with a focus on the psychoanalytic facets and the power of the male, patriarchal gaze.

- Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

- Mighall, Robert. A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

- Parsons, Deborah L. Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City, and Modernity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

- Walkowitz, Judith R. Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

- Sala, George Augustus. Twice Around the Clock: Or, The Hours of the Day and Night in London (1862)

-Houston, Gail Turley. From Dickens to Dracula. 2005.