M/C Reviews: Review of 'The Handbook to Gothic Literature'

	Review of The Handbook to Gothic Literature Kim Wilkins
	The Handbook to Gothic Literature, edited by Marie Mulvey-Roberts	7 June 2001

Bit

Bit 1		Trying to sort through the discourse surrounding Gothic literature is a Gothic pursuit in itself. Meanings open up within meanings, or disappear down dark corridors, or fall apart into confusion at precisely the moment fulfilment is promised. This instability of meaning--"what is the Gothic? how can it be applied?"--is not surprising given the word itself is deeply polysemous. It signifies a Germanic font, as much as a millennium sub-culture, as much as a fifth-century race of barbarians, as much as an architectural style. The first appearance of the word in Old English, in Bede's eighth-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People (which he had originally written in Latin), suggests that the word came from elsewhere: brought with the ravaging Gothic hoard; mediated via the Roman tongue. It seems emblematic of the other-where, other-when of Gothicness.
Bit 2		And yet, somehow, it came to be applied to a genre of English literature. After the middle ages, when English culture looked back on the pre-literate (and pre-Reformed) world, Gothic came to signify the imagined barbarism of that time, a "dark age" in history. Most commonly, it referred to the architecture of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Luckily for critics, Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto carried the subtitle "A Gothic Story," presumably to indicate the setting amongst crumbling Gothic-style ruins. Walpole's subtitle is the first conscious use of the term applied to literature, and as such provides a ground zero for the study of the Gothic as a collection of literary conventions.
Bit 3		Still, what do those conventions mean outside the original historical context of their formation? It would be imprudent for a critic to ignore the specific material conditions which are imbricated with the Gothic as a genre: the Revolution and Terror across the channel, the crossing of modernity's threshold and leaving behind of the pastoral and feudal, the contestation of the social narrative we call history, the glut of Augustan rationalism. So can we call Angela Carter a Gothic writer, given she wrote in the twentieth century, at least 150 years after the Gothic "moment"? And if we can claim Carter for the genre, what about works which predate the eighteenth century; for example, Webster's Duchess of Malfi, with all its hints of incest, female persecution and dismemberment? These are just some of the questions which haunt the Gothic as a field of study. Others include, is it pulp or is it literature? does it make feminist claims or does it return us firmly into the hands of the patriarchy? can it have anything at all to do with Freud? should I laugh or vomit at this particularly offensive description of a decayed body? Gothic has always been infinitely capable of unsettling categories.
Bit 4		Given this instability, and given Gothic's increasing popularity for critics, something like Mulvey-Roberts' The Handbook to Gothic Literature is sorely needed. As Mulvey-Roberts notes, "The murky flux of the formless mass of Gothic space becomes less terrifying when confined to a handbook, particularly one that is arranged in alphabetical order" (xv). And she's right. Entries such as "death," "nightmares," "penny dreadfuls" are as useful and fascinating as the individual entries on some of Gothic's star players: Walpole, Lewis, Radcliffe, Shelley, Hoffmann, Poe, Lovecraft. Letter by letter, we get back to basics with the Gothic genre. Parameters are drawn, and definitions and dates are sketched in.
Bit 5		For the most part, this delineation is successful. I really can't stress enough how helpful this book would have been to me when I took my first hesitant steps towards the study of Gothic. The entries are lucid and thorough, logical and clearly set-out. However, key oversights have been made. First, there is no entry for the most successful twentieth-century writer in the genre: Stephen King, apart from a fleeting mention that his sales are rivalled by Anne Rice's (who gets a whole entry to herself). Richard Davenport-Hines also overlooked King in his 1998 tome Gothic, which presented itself as a definitive history of the genre. What is going on here? If we intend to write about the Gothic in all its forms, across centuries, we can't keep leaving a gap between M. R. James and Sheridan LeFanu. The Shining is a Gothic novel par excellence, and has the distinction of being read by more people than perhaps any other text Mulvey-Roberts' book makes mention of. I smell literary snobbery here, and it's particularly inappropriate given that Gothic in its original heyday was a genre for the masses. According to David Richter in his 1996 book The Progress of Romance, a staggering forty percent of the novels published between 1764 and 1820 were in the Gothic genre (101). This was not a genre for an elite circle. Literary critics cannot claim the Gothic in its modern form only from the pens of those who have had the mark of "literary value" painted upon them elsewhere.
Bit 6		Which brings me to my second quibble with the book: the entry on "Australian Gothic." While it provides an interesting and thorough examination of the role of Gothic in Australian literature of the past, as soon as it crosses into the late twentieth century it seriously loses credibility. Writers of literary fiction are claimed for the genre--Barbara Hanrahan, Kate Grenville, Peter Carey, Janette Turner Hospital, Louis Nowra--while dedicated writers of the genre are nowhere to be seen. Yes, all of these authors are capable of writing work which is occasionally eerie or unsettling, but Australia has its own specialised and capable practitioners in the Gothic. Terry Dowling writes blistering and distinctly Australian horror tales. Stephen Dedman's fine and crafted stories are replete with ordinary horrors. Sean Williams is Australia's premier writer of speculative fiction, and his Gothic stories have appeared in internationally award-winning collections. Nor can it be said that any of these writers are from a sub-culture, or scantly published. Dowling and Dedman are published and acclaimed internationally; Williams bears the honour of being the only Australian writer ever hired to write Star Wars novelisations. Why aren't these--and other Australian Gothic writers--noted in this entry? If they've slipped beneath the radar, that's bad scholarship; if they've slipped beneath notice, that's basic snobbery.
Bit 7		Mulvey-Roberts has produced an important and, for the most part, thorough resource for the scholar of Gothic literature. Its clarity and convenience will be useful for anyone who wants to dip into the genre without devoting years of study. I urge caution, however. The Gothic always bears gaps--moments of unspeakability which rupture the text. I just hope the "unspeakable" in Mulvey-Roberts' text isn't a product of disdain.

Bit 8		Details The Handbook to Gothic Literature, edited by Marie Mulvey-Roberts. London: Macmillan, 1998.

Bit 9		Citation reference for this article MLA style: Kim Wilkins. "Review of The Handbook to Gothic Literature" M/C Reviews 7 June 2001. [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/words/gothic.html>. Chicago style: Kim Wilkins, "Review of The Handbook to Gothic Literature," M/C Reviews 7 June 2001, <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/words/gothicJoe D.html> ([your date of access]). APA style: Kim Wilkins. (2000) Review of The Handbook to Gothic Literature. M/C Reviews 7 June 2001. <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/words/gothic.html> ([your date of access]).

[image]

Links:
Macmillan