Clive Bloom is calling for expressions of interest in contributing to this three-volume Gothic handbook. This this will be a very exciting project to be involved with.
Please email Professor Bloom directly with ideas or any questions at: cbloom4189@aol.com:
As you might be aware the Palgrave Gothic series has really set up a buzz. Now for something really ambitious!
This is a project I am putting together for Palgrave. It is a three volume scholarly compendium of analytic essays on the gothic from its earliest times to now in three large volumes called the Gothic Handbook! It is intended as the ‘go-to’ compendium for academics and students. It is also intended to be comprehensive and cutting edge exploring every aspect of gothic culture from Strawberry Hill to Slender Man and everything in between.
Moreover it will be an excellent chance to work on crossover cultural aspects and long forgotten writers or neglected designers, architects, painters, poets and film makers. I would love articles and chapters on international gothic too. I am looking for new angles and new subjects although traditional gothic areas will need revisiting through contemporary theories and insights. If you’d like to write about gothic entertainment or gothic cemeteries now is the chance!
Word length is by arrangement, but should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words, so plenty of scope. And there may be opportunity for illustrations. Please look below to see what areas I think need covering and add your own ideas if I have missed any. This will be a ‘live’ project for some years to come and I would love to have you all in at the beginning.
The deadline to signal your interest only is September 30 2017. You do not have to suggest a topic. The final deadline for chapters will be no later than Spring 2019, so lots of time. If you know of others who might be interested (doctoral students especially, but also colleagues) then please pass on this information and direct them to me via this address.
Please note: We will start at the end with volume three so that really contemporary issues may be tackled and new areas of research highlighted. Please look carefully at the proposed topics and think about where you might contribute. As I say I am happy for any different suggestions.
VOLUME I: GOTHIC DREAMS 1740- 1848 proposed deadline 2020-22
PART ONE: THE BEGINNINGS: Gothic antiquarianism; graveyard poems; Edmund Burke and the Sublime; the picturesque gothic; gothic architecture before Strawberry Hill; the influence of Shakespeare; the influence of the Faust myth; the influence of the Marquis De Sade; Horace Walpole; Strawberry Hill; The Castle of Otranto; Maria Edgeworth; William Beckford; Fonthill; Vathek; gothic orientalism; Ernst Hoffman; August Burger; Matthew Lewis; The Monk; The Castle Spectre; Friedrich von Schiller; Charlotte Dacre; Anne Radcliffe and her influence; eighteenth century theories of terror and horror; gothic painting and Fuseli; Joanna Baillie; gothic poetry; Lord Byron and his influence.
PART TWO: ROMANTIC GOTHIC: Coleridge, Wordsworth, and gothicism;Sir Walter Scott and Ivanhoe; Abbotsford; Scottish baronial; John Polidori and The Vampyre; Charles Brockden Brown; Washington Irving; American gothic theatre; English gothic theatre; Mary Shelley and Frankenstein; Thomas de Quincey; Edgar Allan Poe (stories;poems;theories); Heinrich Hoffman; the emergence of Keats and the influence of Tennyson; the Pre Raphaelites; Varney the Vampire; Sweeney Todd (the String of Pearls); William Harrison Ainsworth; bibliography
VOLUME II:STEAM AGE GOTHIC 1850 -1900 proposed deadline 2019-21
PART ONE: VICTORIAN TRANSFORMATIONS: Gothic architecture for the steam age: Charles Barrie; Augustus Pugin and family; George Gilbert Scott and family; the rebuilt Houses of Parliament, the restoration of medieval France; Thomas Lovell Beddoes; John Ruskin; the gothic cemetery (Highgate etc) Victor Hugo; the Brontes; Charles Dickens and the ghost story; Sheriden le Fanu; Sabine Baring Gould; domestic gothic; melodrama and the gothic; Egyptian gothic taste; freaks and raree shows;
PART TWO: FIN DE SIECLE: Guy de Maupassant; gothic music- Wagner and Berlioz; Robert Louise Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; Ambrose Bierce; magic lantern gothic; Conan Doyle gothic; Jack the Ripper; the cult of Pan; Arthur Machen; J K Huysman; Bram Stoker and Dracula; end of the century decadence -erotic gothic and occult gothic; Oscar Wilde and the Picture of Dorian Gray; Richard Marsh and the Beetle; H G Wells; the ghost tales of Edith Wharton; Isaak Dineson; Robert W Chambers, the King in Yellow; Lord Dunsany; Count Steinbock; John Buchan; end of the century ghost tales -minor writers; bibliography
VOLUME III: MODERN GOTHIC 1900-2019 proposed deadline 2019
PART ONE: TWENTIETH CENTURY GOTHIC Introduction; Industrial and urban gothic; Edwardian Weird Fiction; the influence of Jack the Ripper; the later stories of Bram Stoker; Gaston Leroux; M R James; Algernon Blackwood; Vernon Lee; Edison’s Frankenstein; German Expressionism- Caligari and Nosferatu;Giles Gilbert Scott and modernist gothic; HP Lovecraft; Weird Tales and pulp gothic; Aleister Crowley; Guy Endor; James Whale; Expressionist Gothic film; Universal gothic film; Wartime gothic; Hammer gothic film; 1950s gothic comic books; Roger Corman gothic film; Quatermass, the gothic and science fiction.
PART TWO: GOTHIC REBORN Gothic television – children’s gothic; comic book gothic; the Addams Family; Dr Who; Folk Horror; Italian gothic cinema; the Heirs of Lovecraft; goth music; dark fantasy; tourist gothic; goth culture and fashion; ‘Southern’ gothic; Edward Gorey; Stephen King; Susan Hill; Clive Barker; James Herbert; H R Geiger; Alien; Lemony Snicket; tattoo culture; Steampunk; Internet gothic (Slenderman etc); Asian gothic cinema; the ‘new’ gothic Batman;Tim Burton; Guillermo del Toro; techno-gothic; abjection and body horror; feminism and gothicism; the new gender debate and gothicism; gothicism and the sex club scene; torture porn; backwoods gothic; the gothic legacy; contemporary goth visual art; Aurelio Voltaire, Whitby Goth Festival; internet goth/horror memes; bibliography.
