Elizabeth R. Napier
Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press
The Failure of Gothic, the first full-length study of structure in the Gothic novel, is an examination of narrative conventions in one of the most popular and controversial of eighteenth-century English literary genres. The vogue of the Gothic in the later decades of the eighteenth century, its treatment by important critics such as Scott and Coleridge, and its distinctiveness as a genre make its study central to an understanding of eighteenth-century culture, of literary genre and popular literature, and of the problems surrounding attempts to judge quality in a literary work. The English Gothic novel, moreover, has attracted renewed attention from modem critics, who have argued its importance in mirroring the late eighteenth century's discomfort with the political, psychological, and sexual climate of the times. The Failure of Gothic challenges such views, suggesting that the instability of the form may be more successfully addressed through a study of generic structure and the relationship of the Gothic to the designs of the fictional works that preceded it.
Elizabeth R. Napier is Associate Professor of English, Middlebury College, Vermont, USA.
Jacket illustration: engraving for Edward, ou le Spectre du Chateau by Clara Reeve, Paris, 1800. By permission of the British Library.