Introduction: A History of Gothic Studies in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Summary

This Introduction seeks to map the history of Gothic scholarship in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the academic discipline we might now call Gothic Studies came into being. It draws lines of connection between works through four significant, overlapping stages: the first wave of Gothic criticism between the 1920s and the 1960s; the emergence of Gothic Studies as an academic discipline from the late 1970s to the early 2000s; the increasing understanding of Gothic as a ‘contemporary’ mode in the 1980s and beyond; and finally, what can be seen as the institutionalisation of Gothic in the twenty-first century. In doing so, it argues that Gothic Studies in the twenty-first century is simultaneously at its most fertile and at an impasse, a complex deadlock that Gothic scholars of the future must resolve.