The Gothic Ideology

Religious Hysteria and Anti-Catholicism in British Popular Fiction, 1780-1880

Diane Long Hoeveler

The Gothic Ideology

Diane Long Hoeveler

Distributed for University of Wales Press

380 pages | 9 halftones | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2014
Gothic Literary Studies
Cloth $140.00 ISBN: 9781783160488 Published August 2014 For sale in North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand only
Why have generations of readers been intrigued and entertained by tales of evil or persecuted nuns, lecherous monks, dank torture chambers, and haunted, ruined abbeys? The Gothic Ideology argues that the British Protestant imaginary, in order to modernize and secularize, needed an “other” against which it could define itself as a culture and a nation with distinct boundaries. The Gothic Ideology is the first scholarly book to examine the literary and historical origins and uses of these themes, analyzing at the same time their importance in gothic literatures intended for the British lower and middle classes from 1780 to 1880.
Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Anti-Catholicism and the Gothic Ideology: Interlocking Discourse Networks

2. The Construction of the Gothic Nun: Fantasies and the Religious Imaginary

3. The Spectre of Theocracy: Mysterious Monks and ‘Priestcraft’

4. The Foreign Threat: Inquisitions, Autos-de-Fé and Bloody Tribunals

5. Ruined Abbeys: Justifying Stolen Property and the Crusade against Superstition

Epilogue: The Penny Dreadful and the (Almost) Last Gasp of the Gothic Ideology

Notes

Bibliography

Appendix: Anti-Catholic/Gothic Titles

Index

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