Gothic Contemporaries: The Haunted Text [Paperback]

Gothic Contemporariesis the first study to align twenty-first-century fiction with a revised understanding of the Gothic. Through close readings of several twenty-first-century novels—includingThe Story of Lucy Gaultby William Trevor,The Seaby John Banville,The Gatheringby Anne Enright, and others—and drawing ideas from Jacques Derrida’s later works, Joanne Watkiss demonstrates how contemporary fiction reworks the traditional ghost stories of the past. Among the numerous themes Watkins explores are the links between memory and haunting; the architectural function of language; writing and the uncanny; the law and its associations with mortgage, death, and hospitality; the poison of inherited lineage; and the positions of thresholds and traces of violence within space. With its profound interplay of text and theory,Gothic Contemporarieswill appeal not just to students and scholars of Gothic studies, but also to those interested in architecture, film, and contemporary fiction.