Gothic Shakespeares

John Drakakis · Dale Townshend

Dis 2008 · Routledge

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Readings of Shakespeare were both influenced by and influential in the rise of Gothic forms in literature and culture from the late eighteenth century onwards. Shakespeare’s plays are full of ghosts, suspense, fear-inducing moments and cultural anxieties which many writers in the Gothic mode have since emulated, adapted and appropriated.

The contributors to this volume consider:

• Shakespeare’s relationship with popular Gothic fiction of the eighteenth century
• how, without Shakespeare as a point of reference, the Gothic mode in fiction and drama may not have developed and evolved in quite the way it did
• the ways in which the Gothic engages in a complex dialogue with Shakespeare, often through the use of quotation, citation and analogy
• the extent to which the relationship between Shakespeare and the Gothic requires a radical reappraisal in the light of contemporary literary theory, as well as the popular extensions of the Gothic into many modern modes of representation.

In Gothic Shakespeares, Shakespeare is considered alongside major Gothic texts and writers – from Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis and Mary Shelley, up to and including contemporary Gothic fiction and horror film. This volume offers a highly original and truly provocative account of Gothic reformulations of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s significance to the Gothic.

Contributors include: Fred Botting, Elizabeth Bronfen, Glennis Byron, Sue Chaplin, Steven Craig, John Drakakis, Michael Gamer, Jerrold Hogle, Peter Hutchings, Robert Miles, Dale Townshend, Scott Wilson and Angela Wright.

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John Drakakis is Professor in the Department of English, University of Stirling. He has published articles, chapters and books on a wide variety of literature, drama, critical theory and cultural studies. He is also the series editor for Routledge's 'New Critical Idiom series'.

Dale Townshend is Lecturer in Gothic and Romantic Literature in the Department of English, University of Stirling. He has published many articles and co-edited several books on the Gothic.