Surveying the widespread appropriations of the Gothic in contemporary literature and culture, Post-Millennial Gothic shows contemporary Gothic is often romantic, funny and celebratory. Reading a wide range of popular texts, from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series through Tim Burton's Gothic film adaptations of Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows, to the appearance of Gothic in fashion, advertising and television, Catherine Spooner argues that conventional academic and media accounts of Gothic culture have overlooked this celebratory strain of 'Happy Gothic'. Identifying a shift in subcultural sensibilities following media coverage of the Columbine shootings, Spooner suggests that changing perceptions of Goth subculture have shaped the development of twenty-first century Gothic. Reading these contemporary trends back into their sources, Spooner also explores how they serve to highlight previously neglected strands of comedy and romance in earlier Gothic literature.

Return to Twin Peaks offers new critical considerations and approaches to the Twin Peaks series, as well as reflections on its significance and legacy. With texts that analyze the ways in which readers and viewers endow texts with meaning in light of historically situated and culturally shared emphases and interpretive strategies, this volume showcases the ways in which new theoretical paradigms can reinvigorate and enrich understanding of what Twin Peaks was and what it has become since it went off the air in 1991.

In a wide ranging series of introductory essays written by some of the leading figures in the field, this essential guide explores the world of Gothic in all its myriad forms throughout the mid-eighteenth Century to the internet age.

The Routledge Companion to Gothic includes discussion on:

• 
  
• the history of Gothic
• 
  
• gothic throughout the English-speaking world i.e. London and USA as well as the postcolonial landscapes of Australia, Canada and the Indian subcontinent
• 
  
• key themes and concepts ranging from hauntings and the uncanny; Gothic femininities and queer Gothic
• 
  
• gothic in the modern world, from youth to graphic novels and films.

With ideas for further reading, this book is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date guides on the diverse and murky world of the gothic in literature, film and culture.

In a wide ranging series of introductory essays written by some of the leading figures in the field, this essential guide explores the world of Gothic in all its myriad forms throughout the mid-eighteenth Century to the internet age.

The Routledge Companion to Gothic includes discussion on:

• 
  
• the history of Gothic
• 
  
• gothic throughout the English-speaking world i.e. London and USA as well as the postcolonial landscapes of Australia, Canada and the Indian subcontinent
• 
  
• key themes and concepts ranging from hauntings and the uncanny; Gothic femininities and queer Gothic
• 
  
• gothic in the modern world, from youth to graphic novels and films.

With ideas for further reading, this book is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date guides on the diverse and murky world of the gothic in literature, film and culture.

Return to Twin Peaks offers new critical considerations and approaches to the Twin Peaks series, as well as reflections on its significance and legacy. With texts that analyze the ways in which readers and viewers endow texts with meaning in light of historically situated and culturally shared emphases and interpretive strategies, this volume showcases the ways in which new theoretical paradigms can reinvigorate and enrich understanding of what Twin Peaks was and what it has become since it went off the air in 1991.

How to write the history of a cultural mode that, for all its abiding fascination with the past, has challenged and complicated received notions of history from the very start? The Cambridge History of the Gothic rises to this challenge, charting the history of the Gothic even as it reflects continuously upon the mode's tendency to question, subvert and render incomplete all linear historical narratives. Taken together, the three chronologically sequenced volumes in the series provide a rigorous account of the origins, efflorescence and proliferation of the Gothic imagination, from its earliest manifestations in European history through to the present day. Written by an international cast of contributors, the chapters bring fresh scholarly attention to bear upon established Gothic themes while also drawing attention to new critical concerns. As such, they are of relevance to the general reader, the student and the established scholar alike.

This innovative book explores the role played by clothing in the discourses of the Gothic. It makes an explicit connection between the veils, masks and disguises of Gothic convention, and historically-specific fashion discourses, from the revealing chemise-dress popularized by Queen Marie Antoinette to the subcultural style of contemporary Goths. In so doing it sheds new light on the cultural construction of Gothic bodies. Taking an original interdisciplinary approach, Catherine Spooner offers readings of literary, cinematic and popular cultural texts in the context of fashion from the 1790s to the 1990s. Progressing chronologically from the novels of Radcliffe and Lewis through the "sensation" fiction of the Victorian period and the Gothic fiction of the fin-de-siecle, Fashioning Gothic Bodies culminates with twentieth-century film and the supposed resurgence of the Gothic in pre-Millennial culture.

Monstrous media/spectral subjects explores the intersection of monsters, ghosts, representation and technology in Gothic texts from the nineteenth century to the present. It argues that emerging media technologies from the phantasmagoria and magic lantern to the hand-held video camera and the personal computer both shape Gothic subjects and in turn become Gothicised. In a collection of essays that ranges from the Victorian fiction of Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker and Richard Marsh to the music of Tom Waits, world horror cinema and the TV series Doctor Who, this book finds fresh and innovative contexts for the study of Gothic. Combining essays by well-established and emerging scholars, it should appeal to academics and students researching both Gothic literature and culture and the cultural impact of new technologies. -- .

Modern Gothic culture alternately fascinates, horrifies, or bewilders many of us. We cringe at pictures of Marilyn Manson, cheer for Buffy in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and try not to stare at the pierced and tattooed teens we pass on the streets. But what is it about this dark and morbidly morose aesthetic that fascinates us today? In "Contemporary Gothic," Catherine Spooner probes the reasons behind the prevalence of the Gothic in popular culture and how it has inspired innovative new work in film, literature, music, and art.
Spooner traces the emergence of the Gothic subculture over the past few decades and examines the various aspects of contemporary society that revolve around the grotesque, abject, and artificial. The Gothic is continually resituated in different spheres of culture, she reveals, as she explores the transplantation of the "street" Goth style to haute couture runway looks by fashion designers. The Gothic also appears in a number of surprisingly diverse representations, and Spooner" "considers them all, from the artistic excesses of Jake and Dinos Chapman to the fashions of Alexander McQueen, and from the mind-bending films of David Lynch to the abnormal postmodern subjects of Joel-Peter Witkin's photography.
In an engaging way, "Contemporary Gothic "argues that this style ultimately balances a number of contradictions--the grotesque and incorporeal, authentic self-expression and campiness, mass popularity and cult appeal, comfort and outrage--and these contradictions make the Gothic a crucial expression of contemporary cultural currents. Whether seeking to understand the stories behind the TV show "Supernatural "or to extract deeper meanings from modernliterature, "Contemporary Gothic" is a lively and virtually unparalleled study of the modern Gothic sensibility that pervades popular culture today.

This second volume of The Cambridge History of the Gothic provides a rigorous account of the Gothic in British, American and Continental European culture, from the Romantic period through to the Victorian fin de siecle. Here, leading scholars in the fields of literature, theatre, architecture and the history of science and popular entertainment explore the Gothic in its numerous interdisciplinary forms and guises, as well as across a range of different international contexts. As much a cultural history of the Gothic in this period as an account of the ways in which the Gothic mode has participated in the formative historical events of modernity, the volume offers fresh perspectives on familiar themes while also drawing new critical attention to a range of hitherto overlooked concerns. From Romanticism, to Penny Bloods, Dickens and even the railway system, the volume provides a compelling and comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Gothic culture.

Monstrous media/spectral subjects explores the intersection of monsters, ghosts, representation and technology in Gothic texts from the nineteenth century to the present. It argues that emerging media technologies from the phantasmagoria and magic lantern to the hand-held video camera and the personal computer both shape Gothic subjects and in turn become Gothicised. In a collection of essays that ranges from the Victorian fiction of Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker and Richard Marsh to the music of Tom Waits, world horror cinema and the TV series Doctor Who, this book finds fresh and innovative contexts for the study of Gothic. Combining essays by well-established and emerging scholars, it should appeal to academics and students researching both Gothic literature and culture and the cultural impact of new technologies. -- .

The third volume of The Cambridge History of the Gothic is the first book to provide an in-depth history of Gothic literature, film, television and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (c. 1896-present). Identifying key historical shifts from the birth of film to the threat of apocalypse, leading international scholars offer comprehensive coverage of the ideas, events, movements and contexts that shaped the Gothic as it entered a dynamic period of diversification across all forms of media. Twenty-three chapters plus an extended introduction provide in-depth accounts of topics including Modernism, war, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, counterculture, feminism, AIDS, neo-liberalism, globalisation, multiculturalism, the war on terror and environmental crisis. Provocative and cutting edge, this will be an essential reference volume for anyone studying modern and contemporary Gothic culture.

Surveying the widespread appropriations of the Gothic in contemporary literature and culture, Post-Millennial Gothic shows contemporary Gothic is often romantic, funny and celebratory. Reading a wide range of popular texts, from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series through Tim Burton's Gothic film adaptations of Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows, to the appearance of Gothic in fashion, advertising and television, Catherine Spooner argues that conventional academic and media accounts of Gothic culture have overlooked this celebratory strain of 'Happy Gothic'. Identifying a shift in subcultural sensibilities following media coverage of the Columbine shootings, Spooner suggests that changing perceptions of Goth subculture have shaped the development of twenty-first century Gothic. Reading these contemporary trends back into their sources, Spooner also explores how they serve to highlight previously neglected strands of comedy and romance in earlier Gothic literature.