Considers how war and conflict were central to the Gothic as a developing genre in the late eighteenth century.
The Gothic at War explores and analyzes how Gothic fiction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries utilized the form to explore the anxieties and fears of a nation at war, tracing a lineage and legacy of engagement from Horace Walpole through to Clara Reeve and Ann Radcliffe and beyond. The figure of the soldier is prevalent in the pages of the Gothic novels of this period. He is sometimes a heroic pinnacle of masculinity, sometimes a devious villain, and yet also often a fraught, uncertain figure.
This book unravels the Gothic’s engagement with Britain’s anxieties and ideologies about the military and nationality as the conflict following the French Revolution unfolded.
The Gothic at War explores and analyzes how Gothic fiction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries utilized the form to explore the anxieties and fears of a nation at war, tracing a lineage and legacy of engagement from Horace Walpole through to Clara Reeve and Ann Radcliffe and beyond. The figure of the soldier is prevalent in the pages of the Gothic novels of this period. He is sometimes a heroic pinnacle of masculinity, sometimes a devious villain, and yet also often a fraught, uncertain figure.
This book unravels the Gothic’s engagement with Britain’s anxieties and ideologies about the military and nationality as the conflict following the French Revolution unfolded.
272 pages | 5.43 x 8.5
History: Military History
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
Table of Contents
Introduction: Reclaiming Ancient Glories?: Military masculinity and the rise of the Gothic
Chapter One: ‘His gallant and indefatigable behaviour’: Horace Walpole, Henry Seymour Conway, and finding the soldier in The Castle of Otranto
Chapter Two: Champions of Virtue: Effeminacy, chivalry and national virtue in Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron
Chapter Three: ‘That which is right’: Fashioning the soldier as hero in the early works of Ann Radcliffe
Chapter Four: ‘Tinsel ornaments’: Revolution, Gothic realties, and Charlotte Smith’s anti-war novels
Chapter Five: ‘He is just what a young man ought [not] to be’: Anxiety, conflict and failed masculinity in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho
Chapter Six: ‘I am not what I am’: Fractured masculinities and female distress in The Midnight Bell and Clermont
Conclusion: ‘This comes of the peace’: War and the Gothic beyond the Napoleonic
Bibliography
Chapter One: ‘His gallant and indefatigable behaviour’: Horace Walpole, Henry Seymour Conway, and finding the soldier in The Castle of Otranto
Chapter Two: Champions of Virtue: Effeminacy, chivalry and national virtue in Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron
Chapter Three: ‘That which is right’: Fashioning the soldier as hero in the early works of Ann Radcliffe
Chapter Four: ‘Tinsel ornaments’: Revolution, Gothic realties, and Charlotte Smith’s anti-war novels
Chapter Five: ‘He is just what a young man ought [not] to be’: Anxiety, conflict and failed masculinity in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho
Chapter Six: ‘I am not what I am’: Fractured masculinities and female distress in The Midnight Bell and Clermont
Conclusion: ‘This comes of the peace’: War and the Gothic beyond the Napoleonic
Bibliography