Spectres of Antiquity

Abstract Gothic literature imagines the return of ghosts from the past. What about the classical past? Spectres of Antiquity is the first full-length study describing the relationship between Greek and Roman culture and the Gothic novels, poetry, and drama of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. Rather than simply representing the opposite of classical aesthetics and ideas, the Gothic emerged from an awareness of the lingering power of antiquity, and it irreverently fractures and deconstructs classical images and ideas. The Gothic also reflects a new vision of the ancient world: no longer inspiring modernity through its examples, antiquity has become a ghost, haunting and oppressing contemporary minds rather than guiding them. Through readings of canonical works by authors including Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Mary Shelley, Spectres of Antiquity argues that these authors’ ghostly plots and ideas preserve the remembered traces of Greece and Rome. In comprehensive detail, Spectres of Antiquity rewrites the history of the Gothic, demonstrating that the genre was haunted by a far deeper sense of history than readers had previously assumed.