The Gothic–Theory Conversation: An Introduction

This opening essay traces the persistent interplay between theory and the Gothic mode from the very beginning of the latter's rise in the eighteenth century. Then it proceeds to show how the Gothic and theory keep weaving into and out of each other, even as recently as the twenty-first century. That brief history sets up this volume's fundamental principle: that the Gothic and theory are so interactive in affecting and inspiring each other that many Gothic fictions are theoretical advances in aesthetics and culture just as much as certain kinds of theory are helpful in explaining the Gothic because they are already undercurrents in Gothic formations themselves. Finally, by providing concise definitions of the theoretical assumptions included here, this introduction sets up each of the following chapters as distinctive in revealing the Gothic-Theory interplay and how it has worked in particular cultural realms.