This guide provides an overview of the most significant issues and debates in Gothic studies.

Supplementary material includes a chronology of key Gothic texts, listing literature and film from 1757 to 2000, and a comprehensive guide to further reading.

This work dissects popular examples from the gothic literary and cinematic canon, exposing the inverted comic paradigm within each text. Rooting his study in comedy as theoretically conceived by Suzanne Langer, C.L. Barber and Mikhail Bakhtin, Morgan analyses the physical and mythological nature of horror in inverted comic terms, identifying a biologically grounded mythos of horror. Motifs such as sinister loci, languishment, masquerade, and subversion of sensual perception are contextualized here as embedded in an organic reality, resonating with biological motives and consequences.

Goethe's Concept of the Daemonic: After the Ancients (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

For Plato, the daemonic is a sensibility that brings individuals into contact with divine knowledge; Socrates was also inspired by a "divine voice" known as his "daimonion." Goethe was introduced to this ancient concept by Hamann and Herder, who associated it with the aesthetic category of genius. This book shows how the young Goethe depicted the idea of daemonic genius in works of the Storm and Stress period, before exploring the daemonic in a series of later poetic and autobiographical works.

Critical Companion to George Orwell: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work

George Orwell is one of the great writers of the 20th century, famous for his direct and powerful style as well as for his fictional condemnations of totalitarianism. The new "Critical Companion to George Orwell" is an up-to-date and useful reference to Orwell's life and work for high school and college-level students. All his works are covered, including two of the most-recognized novels of the 20th century:"Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four"; his famous essays, such as "Politics and the English Language" and ...

Student Companion to George Orwell: (Student Companions to Classic Writers)

Written with students and general readers in mind, this volume examines George Orwell's powerful fictional writing, as well as his provocative documentaries and essays. Students will gain an appreciation for the many levels of meaning in the allegorical Animal Farm and the startlingly prescient 1984. Brunsdale does a masterful job of showing how personal and world events came together in Orwell's writing.