Gothic Renaissance : A Reassessment

This collection of essays by experts in Renaissance and Gothic studies tracks the lines of connection between Gothic sensibilities 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. Front matter Contents Acknowledgements Notes on contributors Introduction Part I Shakespearean hauntings Yorick’s skull Beyond reason: Hamlet and early modern stage ghosts ‘What do I fear? Myself?’: nightmares, conscience and the ‘Gothic’ self in Richard III Queen Margaret’s haunting revenge: the Gothic legacy of Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses Part II Gothic Renaissance theatre Vision and desire: fantastic Renaissance spectacles From grotesque to Gothic: Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queenes Part III Gothic textuality inthe early modern period Exhumations: scopophobia in Renaissance texts Bright hair and brittle bones – Gothic affinities in metaphysical poetry Vampirism in the Bower of Bliss Ghostly authorities and the British popular press Part IV Persistence of the Gothic Monstrous to our human reason: minding the gap in The Winter’s Tale Shakespeare, Ossian and the problem of ‘Scottish Gothic’ The rage of Caliban: Dorian Grayand the Gothic body Index