Gothic Renaissance: A reassessment

This collection of scholarly essays aims to reappraise the vibrant connection between a Gothic sensibility and the discursive network of the Renaissance. The texts covered encompass poetry, epic narratives, ghost stories, prose dialogues, political pamphlets and Shakespeare's texts, read alongside those of other playwrights.

The authors show that the Gothic sensibility addresses subversive fantasies of transgression, be this in regard to gender (troubling stable notions of masculinity and femininity), in regard to social orders (challenging hegemonic, patriarchal or sovereign power), or in regard to disciplinary discourses (dictating what is deemed licit and what illicit or deviant). They relate these issues back to the early modern period as a moment of transition, in which categories of individual, gendered, racial and national identity began to emerge, and connect the religious and the pictorial turn within early modern textual production to a reassessment of Gothic culture.

Through analysis of a wide range of genres and writers, Gothic Renaissance isolates distinct but interrelated links between the early modern cultural imaginary and Gothic sensibility, and will appeal to academics and students of Gothic Studies, Victorian literature, and Early Modern drama and poetry.