Foreshadowings: Batman

This week is another first for the Gothic Reading Group as we turn our attention to not one, but two new media and consider the role played by the long-running Batman franchise in defining a kind of popular Gothic. Batman may seem an odd place for a group of (predominantly) eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary specialists to end up, but it doesn't take long to see just how seminal this material is to the place and reception of the Gothic in the modern period. What's more, the Batman character and universe provide their own rich multi-media timeline within which we can plot some fascinating trends in popular uses of and attitudes towards the Gothic itself. From psychology to criminology and political theory, there's plenty to explore in Gotham. Here Richard Gough Thomas offers a concise introduction to the history of Batman and offers a few ways into our session. Kapow.

Foreshadowings: Le Fanu's Carmilla

The next meeting of the Gothic Reading Group will tackle some fiction by J.S. Le Fanu, as we head into the nineteenth century and look at some classic 'Victorian Gothic.' Le Fanu has been on the cards for some time, having been one of the first authors suggested by GRG members in the 2012-13 year; it's great to finally take a look at some of his work. Our flagship text for this meeting will be Le Fanu's great vampire novella Carmilla. In the following preview blog Lauren Nixon picks up where the last session left us and takes a look at Carmilla's place in a broader tradition of vampire fiction, pre- and post-dating the Victorian period. 

Recollections - 2013-14 Session Six: Selections from John Stagg's The Minstrel of the North

Last week the Gothic Reading Group met to discuss a selection of pieces by the largely forgotten Romantic poet, John Stagg. Much of the conversation revolved around Stagg's place in relation to an existing scholarly understanding of the 18th and 19th century Gothic. This has lead Mark to produce a longer blog post than usual, framing the group's discussion of Stagg within a broader set of musings on canonicity and the Gothic. Rest assured, no substantive conclusions will be reached. If you (quite understandably) just want to read about Demon Lovers and Vampyres, skip ahead to the sub-heading.

Foreshadowings: John Stagg, A Forgotten Gothic Poet

This week the Gothic Reading Group will boldly go where (to the best of our knowledge) no scholars have gone before as we tackle the forgotten Romantic-era poet, John Stagg. Ahead of the session Mark has been pondering where best to situate Stagg in our existing sense of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic writing and doing some background research on the author's career. The results are quite interesting. . .

Recollections - 2013-14 Session Five: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

The Gothic Reading Group met for our first session last week, with a screening of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and an accompanying discussion of its source novella, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? As always, we were keen to break some new ground. This was our first meeting discussing two different media and, perhaps, our first meeting discussing material that wasn't as obviously 'Gothic' as our usual fare. Part of our remit with the Gothic Reading Group is to explore materials at the periphery of the accepted 'Gothic canon' (or beyond!) and our discussion did us proud in using these materials to tackle the relationship between Gothic and Science Fiction. In the following blog post Kathleen reviews some of that discussion and asks how we might use the Gothic as a route into interpreting related materials.

Foreshadowings - Do Goths Dream of Electric Bats?

We've a little over a week to go until our first session of 2014. As usual, we're kicking off with a film: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, but this time we'll also be reading the film's source material: Philip K. Dick's short novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Both 'texts' are famous within the canons of science fiction cinema and literature (Blade Runner is the 20th best film of all time according to Empire magazine and Androids was one of the first novels re-issued under the SF Masterworks imprint). . . but are they Gothic? Mark isn't sure, but, by way of an introduction to the session, he's going to have a think.

Sources and Resources - Background and Materials for Winterson

The Gothic Reading Group meets for its last session of 2013 this week: capping off a semester that's seen us travel from 21st century horror cinema to transatlantic 19th century fictionalisations of madness and now back (via a bit of cosmic horror) to Jeanette Winterson's 2012 novel based on the infamous Lancashire Witch trials. As you might expect from a twenty-first century re-telling of a piece of seventeenth century 'history' (and all its intervening mythologisations) there's a lot of interesting context and background available to inform our discussion of this text. In the following post Richard Gough Thomas explores some of these and others some resources for those interested in the story (or stories) of Pendle.

Recollections - 2013-14 Session Three: H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" (1924), "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928) and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1936)

For our third session this year the Gothic Reading Group continued its exploration of more 'contemporary' Gothic by looking at three short pieces by the seminal early twentieth-century horror author, H.P. Lovecraft. One of the key questions our discussion revolved around was Lovecraft's relation to the Gothic. This was partly because the question was an interesting one (effectively posed by the writer himself, who wrote a long and well-informed essay on "Supernatural Horror in Literature") and partly because Mark kept bringing it up and wouldn't let it go. As collective penance, Mark has taken it upon himself to summarise the session here. This is penance for Mark, because he is an eighteenth-century specialist who knows relatively little about twentieth-century horror; this is penance for everyone else because Mark is an eighteenth-century specialist who knows relatively little about twentieth-century horror. . . but he does know where to find ridiculous youtube videos. Read on for ridiculous youtube videos.

Recollections - 2013-14 Session Two: Edgar Allen Poe's "Berenice" (1835) and Charles Dickens's "A Madman's Manuscript" (1836)

This week sees our third meeting this term (and ninth session overall, fact-fans) but before we get stuck into Lovecraft, here'sKate Gadsby Macesumming up our last session on Poe and Dickens and highlighting some of the points around which our conversation turned.

Sources and Resources - Background and materials for H.P. Lovecraft

Ahead of next week's Lovecraft session we've got another great blog post by visiting Gothic Reading Group member, Richard Gough Thomas. Whether you're new to Lovecraft and don't know your Shoggoths from your Azathoths or if you're just curious about sources for Lovecraft scholarship and adaptations, Richard's post will have something for you.

Update - Stories for Lovecraft Session

A very quick update here as Mark confirms the additional texts for the Gothic Reading Group's upcoming third session on H.P. Lovecraft.

Foreshadowings - H.P. Lovecraft as a Gothic writer

It's almost time for our third session this year and this time we're looking at a huge figure in the canon of horror fiction and an author synonymous with the sub-genre of 'weird fiction.' But is H.P. Lovecraft a 'Gothic' writer? How should we approach him as such? What kind of devices, familiar from the Gothic tradition, does his brand of fiction rely upon? Thankfully, Kathleen has some interesting thoughts on these questions to help us get started.

Sources and Resources - Surfing the web for Dickens and Poe

We've not long to go until the second Gothic Reading Group session for this term. In the wake of the previous introductory post on Dickens and Poe's tales of 'madness,' Mark has been hunting around the internet for interesting supplementary materials. Here are a few of his favourites. They might offer a bit of stimulus ahead of the the meeting on Wednesday - if you've found anything interesting yourself, do let us know.

Recollections - 2013-14 Session One: Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead

On the 16th of October the Gothic Reading Group held its first session of the 2013-14 academic year: screening and discussing Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead(2013). This was a first for us in a couple of other senses too: being the most contemporary 'text' we'd looked at together and our most graphic piece of 'horror' so far. Though members were quick to question the film's internal logic (and physics...), we can safely say that none of the eighteenth-century dramas, nineteenth-century monster narratives or even twentieth-century films that we've looked at before said quite such an emphatic 'farewell to arms.' And cheeks. And eyeballs. Here Mark has a crack at summarising the group's response to the film and picking out keynotes in our discussion.

Foreshadowings - Texts and Contexts for Poe and Dickens

Our first session last week was a great success, with lots of interesting discussion following a screening of The Evil Dead. There'll be a blog follow-up in the next few days, but, in the meantime, we've the second session of this year's Gothic Reading Group to look forward to next week. This time we are actually readingsomething. Two things, in fact. By way of an introduction to the material, here's Mark linking comedy cartoons and telling you to go read entire volumes of a nineteenth-century American magazine. . .

Foreshadowings - 'Reading' The Evil Dead

We've only a couple of weeks to go until our first session for this academic year. In the meantime, we hope everyone's enjoying the beginning of the new term and getting stuck into some Gothic studies. Here at the Gothic Reading Group blog we've already had two great posts to help set us up for our screening of The Evil Dead. Kathleen Hudson has taken us through some of the hallmarks of the original series and asked how and why they might (or might not) make it across the reboot intact. Meanwhile, Adam James Smith has offered a way to think about the connections between contemporary horror cinema and the truth claims associated with original Gothic texts and their ability to frighten readers in the eighteenth century.This time, Mark Bennett ponders something that relates to both previous posts: homing in on one particular (and fairly obvious) trope in the original Evil Dead films, thinking about its relationship to an eighteenth-century Gothic and wondering how it will be treated in the new reboot.

Next Text? - The Evil Dead

The new academic year is very nearly upon us and we'll soon be finalising a schedule for the Gothic Reading Group, including picking a text for our first meeting. With that in mind, here's the first in what will hopefully be a semi-regular "feature" here on the GRG site: a brief blog post taking a look at a potential text. Our blogger on this occasion is Kathleen Hudson, a second-year PhD student in the school of English. Here Kathleen takes a look at theEvil Deadfranchise (a strong contender for a debut film?) pondering what it is that separates the recent 2013 reboot from the original series, what kind of generic shift occurs en route and how vital a sense of the Unheimlichmight be in producing the kind of experiences appropriate to a certain type of horror cinema.