Longlisted for the 2022 International Gothic Association's Allan Lloyd Smith Prize Surpassing scholarly discourse surrounding the emergent secularism of the 19th century, Theology, Horror and Fiction argues that the Victorian Gothic is a genre fascinated with the immaterial. Through close readings of popular Gothic novels across the 19th century – Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others – Jonathan Greenaway demonstrates that to understand and read Gothic novels is to be drawn into the discourses of theology. Despite the differences in time, place and context that informed the writers of these stories, the Gothic novel is irreducibly fascinated with religious and theological ideas, and this angle has been often overlooked in broader scholarly investigations into the intersections between literature and religion. Combining historical theological awareness with interventions into contemporary theology, particularly around imaginative apologetics and theology and the arts, Jonathan Greenaway offers the beginnings of a modern theology of the Gothic.

Theology in the Early British and Irish Gothic, 1764–1832 reassesses the relationship between contemporary theology and the Gothic. Investigating Gothic aesthetics, depictions of the supernatural and portrayals of religious organisations, it explores how the Gothic engages with contemporary theologies, both Dissenting and Anglican. Moving away from the emphasis on either a monolithic Protestantism or on the Gothic as a secular mode, it shows the ways in which the Gothic exploration of the transcendent and the obscure cannot be separated from the diverse theologies of its day. The project maps how the Gothic not only reflects but actively engages in the theological debates and controversies contemporary to its efflorescence.

What is the Gothic? Few literary genres have attracted so much praise and critical disdain simultaneously. This Guide returns to the Gothic novel's first wave of popularity, between 1764 and 1820, to explore and analyse the full range of contradictory responses that the Gothic evoked. Angela Wright appraises the key criticism surrounding the Gothic fiction of this period, from 18th century accounts to present-day commentaries. Adopting an easy-to-follow thematic approach, the Guide examines: - Contemporary criticism of the Gothic - The aesthetics of terror and horror - The influence of the French Revolution - Religion, nationalism and the Gothic - The relationship between psychoanalysis and the Gothic - The relationship between gender and the Gothic. Concise and authoritative, this indispensable Guide provides an overview of Gothic criticism and covers the work of a variety of well-known Gothic writers, such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis and many others.

This is the first major full-length study of Victorian Gothic fiction. Combining original readings of familiar texts with a rich store of historical sources, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction is an historicist survey of nineteenth-century Gothic writing--from Dickens to Stoker, Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle, through European travelogues, sexological textbooks, ecclesiastic histories and pamphlets on the perils of self-abuse. Critics have thus far tended to concentrate on specific angles of Gothic writing (gender or race), or the belief that the Gothic 'returned' at the so-called fin de siècle. Robert Mighall, by contrast, demonstrates how the Gothic mode was active throughout the Victorian period, and provides historical explanations for its development from late eighteenth century, through the 'Urban Gothic' fictions of the mid-Victorian period, the 'Suburban Gothic' of the Sensation vogue, through to the somatic horrors of Stevenson, Machen, Stoker, and Doyle at the century's close. Mighall challenges the psychological approach to Gothic fiction which currently prevails, demonstrating the importance of geographical, historical, and discursive factors that have been largely neglected by critics, and employing a variety of original sources to demonstrate the contexts of Gothic fiction and explain its development in the Victorian period.

From its beginnings in Puritan sermonising to its prominent place in contemporary genre film and fiction, this book traces the use of terror in the American popular imagination. Entering American culture partly by way of religious sanction, it remains an important heart and mind shaping tool.

This work introduces key debates, movements, and ideas relating to the Christian religion, and connects these to literary developments from 1750-1914. The authors provide close readings of popular texts and use these to explore complex religious ideas.