Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations and Captions for Volume II
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Gothic in the Nineteenth Century, 1800–1900
- 2.1 Gothic Romanticism and the Summer of 1816
- 2.2 Fantasmagoriana: The Cosmopolitan Gothic and Frankenstein
- 2.3 The Mutation of the Vampire in Nineteenth-Century Gothic
- 2.4 From Romantic Gothic to Victorian Medievalism: 1817 and 1877
- 2.5 Nineteenth-Century Gothic Architectural Aesthetics: A. W. N. Pugin, John Ruskin and William Morris
- 2.6 Gothic Fiction, from Shilling Shockers to Penny Bloods
- 2.7 The Theatrical Gothic in the Nineteenth Century
- 2.8 ‘Spectrology’: Gothic Showmanship in Nineteenth-Century Popular Shows and Media
- 2.9 The Gothic in Victorian Poetry
- 2.10 The Genesis of the Victorian Ghost Story
- 2.11 Charles Dickens and the Gothic
- 2.12 Victorian Domestic Gothic Fiction
- 2.13 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Spain
- 2.14 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Italy
- 2.15 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Scotland
- 2.16 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
- 2.17 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century America
- 2.18 Nineteenth-Century British and American Gothic and the History of Slavery
- 2.19 Genealogies of Monstrosity: Darwin, the Biology of Crime and Nineteenth-Century British Gothic Literature
- 2.20 Gothic and the Coming of the Railways
- 2.21 Gothic Imperialism at the Fin de siècle
- Select Bibliography
- Index
2.1 - Gothic Romanticism and the Summer of 1816
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2020
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations and Captions for Volume II
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Gothic in the Nineteenth Century, 1800–1900
- 2.1 Gothic Romanticism and the Summer of 1816
- 2.2 Fantasmagoriana: The Cosmopolitan Gothic and Frankenstein
- 2.3 The Mutation of the Vampire in Nineteenth-Century Gothic
- 2.4 From Romantic Gothic to Victorian Medievalism: 1817 and 1877
- 2.5 Nineteenth-Century Gothic Architectural Aesthetics: A. W. N. Pugin, John Ruskin and William Morris
- 2.6 Gothic Fiction, from Shilling Shockers to Penny Bloods
- 2.7 The Theatrical Gothic in the Nineteenth Century
- 2.8 ‘Spectrology’: Gothic Showmanship in Nineteenth-Century Popular Shows and Media
- 2.9 The Gothic in Victorian Poetry
- 2.10 The Genesis of the Victorian Ghost Story
- 2.11 Charles Dickens and the Gothic
- 2.12 Victorian Domestic Gothic Fiction
- 2.13 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Spain
- 2.14 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Italy
- 2.15 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Scotland
- 2.16 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
- 2.17 The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century America
- 2.18 Nineteenth-Century British and American Gothic and the History of Slavery
- 2.19 Genealogies of Monstrosity: Darwin, the Biology of Crime and Nineteenth-Century British Gothic Literature
- 2.20 Gothic and the Coming of the Railways
- 2.21 Gothic Imperialism at the Fin de siècle
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter surveys the literary achievements of the group of writers who gathered together on the banks of Lake Geneva in the Summer of 1816: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; Percy Bysshe Shelley; John Polidori; and Lord Byron. Beginning with the famous ghost storytelling competition proposed by Byron, it considers the extent to which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, while located in the earlier tradition of Radcliffean romance, forged new directions for the Gothic mode through its graphic realisation of corporeal and textual monstrosity. While it forces us to reconsider notions of origin and influence among the group, Polidori’s The Vampyre, the chapter argues, bequeathed to the Gothic its own ‘monstrous progeny’. Engaging with, and thoroughly revising, the earlier poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Shelley and Byron, for their part, set in place some of the distinctive features of second-generation Romanticism, even if the works that they produced during this period force us to interrogate the critical distinction between the ‘Romantic’ and the ‘Gothic’ itself.
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- The Cambridge History of the Gothic , pp. 19 - 40Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020