Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A History of Gothic Studies in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.1 Gothic and Silent Cinema
- 3.2 Gothic, the Great War and the Rise of Modernism, 1910‒1936
- 3.3 Gothic and the American South, 1919‒1962
- 3.4 Hollywood Gothic, 1930–1960
- 3.5 Gothic and War, 1930‒1991
- 3.6 Gothic and the Postcolonial Moment
- 3.7 Gothic and the Heritage Movement in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.8 Gothic Enchantment: The Magical Strain in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Anglo-American Gothic
- 3.9 Psychoanalysis and the American Popular Gothic, 1954–1980
- 3.10 Gothic and the Counterculture, 1958‒Present
- 3.11 Gothic Television
- 3.12 Gothic and the Rise of Feminism
- 3.13 Gothic, AIDS and Sexuality, 1981–Present
- 3.14 The Gothic in the Age of Neo-Liberalism, 1990‒Present
- 3.15 The Gothic and Remix Culture
- 3.16 Postdigital Gothic
- 3.17 Gothic Multiculturalism
- 3.18 Gothic, Neo-Imperialism and the War on Terror
- 3.19 Global Gothic 1: Islamic Gothic
- 3.20 Global Gothic 2: East Asian Gothic
- 3.21 Global Gothic 3: Gothic in Modern Scandinavia
- 3.22 Gothic in an Age of Environmental Crisis
- 3.23 Gothic and the Apocalyptic Imagination
- Select Bibliography and Filmography
- Index
3.2 - Gothic, the Great War and the Rise of Modernism, 1910‒1936
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2021
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A History of Gothic Studies in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.1 Gothic and Silent Cinema
- 3.2 Gothic, the Great War and the Rise of Modernism, 1910‒1936
- 3.3 Gothic and the American South, 1919‒1962
- 3.4 Hollywood Gothic, 1930–1960
- 3.5 Gothic and War, 1930‒1991
- 3.6 Gothic and the Postcolonial Moment
- 3.7 Gothic and the Heritage Movement in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.8 Gothic Enchantment: The Magical Strain in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Anglo-American Gothic
- 3.9 Psychoanalysis and the American Popular Gothic, 1954–1980
- 3.10 Gothic and the Counterculture, 1958‒Present
- 3.11 Gothic Television
- 3.12 Gothic and the Rise of Feminism
- 3.13 Gothic, AIDS and Sexuality, 1981–Present
- 3.14 The Gothic in the Age of Neo-Liberalism, 1990‒Present
- 3.15 The Gothic and Remix Culture
- 3.16 Postdigital Gothic
- 3.17 Gothic Multiculturalism
- 3.18 Gothic, Neo-Imperialism and the War on Terror
- 3.19 Global Gothic 1: Islamic Gothic
- 3.20 Global Gothic 2: East Asian Gothic
- 3.21 Global Gothic 3: Gothic in Modern Scandinavia
- 3.22 Gothic in an Age of Environmental Crisis
- 3.23 Gothic and the Apocalyptic Imagination
- Select Bibliography and Filmography
- Index
Summary
This chapter provides a fresh, detailed and historicised account of ‘high’ Modernism and its relationship to the Gothic, c.1910–1936. It explores the various ways in which Modernist theories of the aesthetic – the novel, the short story, Imagist poetry – shaped Gothic Modernist representations. Many Modernists overtly despised dark Romanticism – Wyndham Lewis derided the ‘beastly and ridiculous spirit of Keats’ lines’ and Virginia Woolf was quick to dismiss ‘the skull-headed lady’ of the Gothic Romance. Instead, their work privileges an aesthetics of finitude and inference over any use of overtly supernatural machinery. ‘Modern’ accounts of psychology shape these representations of anxiety and entrapment but so, too, do authorial theories of the aesthetic. By reading the work of a range of important Modernist contributors, including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, E. M. Forster and May Sinclair, this chapter suggests that the most enduring examples of Modernist Gothic are found in the mode’s representations of haunting, the unconscious and the dead.
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- The Cambridge History of the GothicVolume 3: Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, pp. 43 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021