Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation

Cambridge Studies in Romanticism

by Michael Gamer

This is the first full-length study to examine the links between high Romantic literature and what has often been thought of as a merely popular genre--the Gothic. Michael Gamer analyzes how and why Romantic writers drew on Gothic conventions while, at the same time, denying their influence in order to claim critical respectability. He shows how the reception of Gothic literature played a fundamental role in the development of Romanticism as an ideology, tracing the politics of reading, writing and reception at the end of the eighteenth century.

Genres: Gothic, Nonfiction, Romanticism, Academic

274 pages, Hardcover

First published September 13, 1996

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gamer traces the relationship between the ‘Romantic’ and the ‘Gothic’. His focus is historizing the terms and tracing their reception.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gamer’s work provides a foundation for the non-digital elements of my inquiry, detailing the interconnectednesss of what is now seen as the separate categories of ‘high’ Romantic literature and ‘low,’ popular Gothic writing. Gamer explores the paradox that “gothic readers, gothic writers, and gothic reviewers are specific categories that do not reflect the demographic makeup of late-eighteenth-century British readership yet dominate gothic’s reception” (37), to argue that “gothic’s cultural stigma could serve as a basis for the construction of more legitimate cultural forms” (200).