A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares
This title challenges the view that ‘psychology’ explains the Gothic. Mighall offers original readings of familiar texts, from Dickens to Stoker, Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle; but also a rich store of original sources, from European travelogues to sexological textbooks, from ecclesiastic histories to pamphlets on the perils of self-abuse.
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A powerful challenge to current critical assumptions,
The author of this book has thrown down the gauntlet to psychoanalytically-minded critics. They’ve long touted forms of Freud’s ‘return of the repressed’ to explain the efficacy of Gothic horror, though feminist Lacanian and Kristevan co-options don’t necessarily please Queer theorists.
Mighall’s work is refreshingly free of talk about desire and subjectivity. For him Gothic writings frequently evoke fear and mystery by depicting a present threatened by the survival of, or sudden reappearance of, disturbing features from a dark, unenlightened past. His strategic move is to discuss revealingly the discourses which historically constituted psychoanalysis and with which Gothic novels of the 1880s and 90s engaged at particular points. He provides much excellent material on earlier Gothic texts also, but his argument reaches its crux in the chapters on late Victorian Gothic concerned with the body as a site of horror – particularly in his discussion of Dracula. Here he lambastes critics for their Whiggish Gothic take on the reactions of Stoker’s Victorian Crew of Light when they find that the dead are really undead and just won’t lie down. His humour and brio make this an entertaining as well as illuminating read.
A lot of original research underpins this book. I would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the Gothic, but particularly to students who are also interested in psychoanalysis and telling the truth about history.
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|A great introduction to why gothic things are frightening,
I’ve been a huge fan of horror books for years and also like to read about science fiction creature model making. When I was a grad student in Hawaii, working on a Tarantino-inspired ghost story about the great Hawaiin god Lono, I was really annoyed that there wasn’t any good criticism of this kind of literature. Now, it’s great news to find literary critics and profs running courses, have started to take creepy books seriously. This is just about the best, but also the oddest, books I’ve read on the subject. It’s very original, and a little weird in places. It’s almost as if this guy, like, really, and I mean really, knows about this stuff a little too well. But I guess that’s ok, given the subject. Maybe it takes someone who actually inhabits the ‘darkside’ to be able to really explain the subject properly. The best chapters are on Vampires which I just love. All vampires are really cool especially when they ‘go for it’. The chapter on Bertrand ‘The Parisian Vampire’ (who likes doing it to dead people) is wild. The big let down though is I wish the author had brought everything up to date. Why stop at 1900, and exclude the likes of Lovecraft, Ann Rice and Clive Barker? Rice writes alot like Bram Stoker, and there’s loads to say about her books (eg. they make great movies) and Barker is ‘the man’ right now. It’s a real shame he also failed to mention the little known but well scary tale ‘Black Dog’s Log’, which is a real classic. Overall, the author’s really up for it. He sure knows how to pick a fight and good for him! Why not? What do these other guys know anyway? The chapter on why Freud is bogus is really funny and worth the price alone. I think I would recommend this to proper students of Horror fiction as well as anyone who likes the history of scary stuff generally.
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|New Orleans gothic,
This is indeed a scholarly book. Mighall’s dank and furious broodings on his subject matter resonate profoundly with my own experience of the development of the gothic genre in New Orleans. I mean, this guy is darker than the bottom of a bayou; a very dark, particularly spooky bayou. Probably haunted. Like every good work of literary criticism, this book stirs up a wonderful gumbo of sophistry and smut, although I would have liked to have seen a greater focus on the role of the vampire as uber-oral-intruder and friend. Some of the filthier aspects might be disturbing for students or the religious, and I’m thinking of the organ fetishist episode in particular. I wonder if Mighall is aware of the recent discovery of a Le Fanu manuscript, curiously entitled “A Case for Mr. Sausage”. This might well be right up his alley. In conclusion, three thumbs up! Smashing!
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