ILHA DO DESTERRO

Gothic: New Directions

Editores Convidados: Dr. Daniel Serravalle de Sá e Dra. Anelise R. Corseuil

Edição: Jan/Jul 2012
Prazo para Submissão de Artigos: 16/12/2011  

The Gothic, those stories of mystery, fantasy and terror that first emerged in the eighteenth century, was once considered exclusively an Anglo-American genre. Early Gothic fiction depicted pseudo-medieval scenarios, dark forests, heroines in moldering castles and villainous priests; features that were often implicated in the construction of national identities. Nineteenth-century writers re-visited and updated early Gothic forms introducing a new repertoire of tropes, settings and iconography: old mansions (not medieval castles), harrowing city alleys (not forests) and the fear of the new technological developments that were invented in the period (telegraph, telephone, light bulb, etc). For example, not many commentators would impugn the Gothic status of texts such as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat (1843), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), or H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1896). The point here is that the Gothic has a particular atmosphere and compositional vocabulary (scenic, structural and linguistic) that manifests itself in a variety of contexts and makes it a recognizable type of narrative. But what to say of the Gothic in other languages? Or written by non-European authors? Over the past decade critics around the world have begun to locate their own cultural traditions of the supernatural and the strange and there has been a growing sense of a less circumscribed Gothic. The current perception of the Gothic understands it as a form of representation legible in transcultural terms that cannot be limited by a set of codes and rules (Punter 1996, Byron 2007). Leonora Ledwon proposes that “it is more appropriate to recognise there are many Gothics” (1993: 261) there being no contradiction in this multiple existence only a plurality of definitions. Fred Botting explains the Gothic exists beyond literary schools and historical periods since it is “a mode that exceeds genre and categories” (1996:14). If the pleasure of narrative may be found in the epistemological project of knowing, the ‘dark’ delights of Gothic texts represent a challenge to rationality. The ‘terror’ of many Gothic narratives lies not in a particular fright, but in a mood of uncertainty. In that particular sense, Allan Lloyd-Smith & Victor Sage call it a failure in representation, a “gap between codes” (2004:2) and Robert Miles refers to the Gothic as a “epistemological slit from origin” (1993: 34) that is consistent in narratives of various historical periods. There are, of course, those who do not believe in the existence of the Gothic such João Alexandre Barbosa, who affirms it is an aptly invented critical category but not original to the Baroque. We propose here to free the Gothic from national/temporal/linguistic connotations and focus on essays cross borders in a variety of ways. Transgression is one of the main characteristics of Gothic tales and a fertile ground for exploring outside, in-between, and across traditional limits. We seek to create an essay collection that explores the full extent of the proliferation of the Gothic and are eager to consider proposals that explore this broader conception. Some possible topics may include (but are not limited to):
• Vampires, werewolves and other ghostly apparitions in popular culture.
• Techno-Gothic (the role of science, medicine and new digital medias in the Gothic)
• Acclimatization of Gothic themes/conventions (authorial influences/reader response)
• The Gothic in films and in comic books
• Gothic violence (trauma, incest, horror, etc.)
• Female Gothic
• Transatlantic trade in gothic books
(history of reading)
• Gender/Sexuality and the Gothic
• Postcolonial Gothic.
• Theoretical paradigms for Anglo-American Gothic vs. Global Gothic.