The Fantastic and European Gothic: History, Literature and the French Revolution (Gothic Literary Studies)

This fascinating study examines the rise of fantastic and frénétique literature in Europe during the nineteenth century, introducing readers to lesser-known writers like Paul Féval and Charles Nodier, whose vampires, ghouls, and doppelgängers were every bit as convincing as those of the more famous Bram Stoker and Ann Radcliffe, but whose political motivations were far more serious. Matthew Gibson demonstrates how these writers used the conventions of the Gothic to attack both the French Revolution and the rise of materialism and positivism during the Enlightenment. At the same time, Gibson challenges current understandings of the fantastic and the literature of terror as promulgated by critics like Tzvetan Todorov, David Punter, and Fred Botting. Acknowledgements Introduction Fantasy and Counter-Revolution in the Theory and Fiction of Charles Nodier History and Politics in the Fantastic Fiction of Hoffmann,and his Reception in France The Double Life of the Artist in the Récits fantastiques of Théophile Gautier, and the Rejection of Bourgeois Life under the July Monarchy ‘A Life in Death a Death in Life’: the Legitimist Novels of Paul Féval and the Catastrophe of the Second Empire Paul Féval’s Le Chevalier Ténèbre and Le Fanu’s ‘The Room in the Dragon Volant’: the Failures of the Bourbon Restoration Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Olalla’, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the Refutation of Utilitarian Morality Conclusion Notes Short Chronology of Relevant Events Bibliography Index This iconoclastic book challenges and changes accepted opinions about the Gothic novel, and will introduce the British and American Reader to works hitherto unknown to them, but rivals in quality to the works of writers like Radcliffe, Lewis and Stoker.