Gothic Pathologies

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Gothic Origins: The Haunting of the Text

   • David Punter

   Pages 1-18

3. The Gothic and the Law: Limits of the Permissible

   • David Punter

   Pages 19-42

4. Laws which Bind the Body: The Case of the Monster

   • David Punter

   Pages 43-62

5. Re-enactments of the Primal Scene: The Example of Zastrozzi

   • David Punter

   Pages 63-81

6. Regimes of Terror: From Robespierre to Conrad

   • David Punter

   Pages 82-100

7. Identification and Gender: The Law of Ligeia

   • David Punter

   Pages 101-120

8. A Descent into the Body: Wuthering Heights

   • David Punter

   Pages 121-137

9. Psychopathology: Contamination and the House of Gothic

   • David Punter

   Pages 138-157

10. Laws of Recollection and Reconstruction: Stephen King

    • David Punter

    Pages 158-179

11. The Body Sublime: Liu Suola’s King of Singers

    • David Punter

    Pages 180-199

12. Gothic After/Words: Abuse and the Body beyond the Law

    • David Punter

    Pages 200-221

13. Back Matter

    Pages 222-251

    PDF

This is a wide-ranging book about aspects of the Gothic, from classic texts such as Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights to contemporary fiction by Iain Banks, William Gibson and many others. It approaches the texts through looking at the opposition between the Gothic and the law, suggesting ways in which Gothic at all points produces transgression. It looks at horror fiction by, for example, Stephen King and Robert Bloch, as well as stories from China and Hong Kong, and suggests new ways in which contemporary literary and psychological theory might relate to and address the Gothic.

• Albert Bloch
• body
• China
• construction
• corpus
• fiction
• gothic
• reconstruction
• British and Irish Literature

'This book maintains David Punter's well-earned stature as a major teacher of us all about the most basic drives in Gothic writing, ones that he reveals with new intensity and power in this provocative and complex study.' - Gothic Studies

'A rich work of critical bricolage...Punter's intensely political engagement.' - Steven Bruhm, Romanticism On the Net

• University of Stirling, UK

  David Punter

DAVID PUNTER is Professor of English Studies at the University of Stirling, where he has been since 1988. Previously he was Professor and Head of Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a past President of the British Association for Romantic Studies and Chair of the Council for College and University English. He has published extensively on Gothic, romantic and contemporary writing, as well as on literature and psychoanalysis.

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