Review
"James Watt argues that generic labels need to be re-examined, with greater attention given to the historical specificity of certain "so-called Gothic" works. This is an exciting historicist study that provides important contextual material for Gothic scholars." British and American Literatures
"...Contesting the Gothic is impressively researched, well-documented, and convincing in its claims." Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
"The exposition is lucid, the reasoning scrupulous, the tone measured and never polemical. The book can be recommended to anyone as the model of a focused and thoroughly professional investigation that carves out a niche of originality in a very crowded literary shelf." Eighteenth-Century Studies
Book Description
This historically grounded account of Gothic fiction takes issue with received accounts of the genre as a stable and continuous tradition. Charting its vicissitudes from Walpole to Scott, Watt shows the Gothic to have been a heterogeneous body of fiction, characterized at times by antagonistic relations between writers or works. Watt examines the novels' political import and concludes by looking ahead to the fluctuating critical status of Scott and the Gothic, and perceptions of the Gothic as a monolithic tradition, which continue to exert a powerful hold.
Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764-1832 FROM THE PUBLISHER
James Watt's historically grounded account of Gothic fiction takes issue with received accounts of the genre as a stable and continuous tradition. Charting its vicissitudes from Walpole's The Castle of Otranto to Scott's Waverley novels, Watt shows the Gothic to have been a heterogeneous body of fiction, characterised at times by antagonistic relations between various writers or works. Central to Watt's argument about the writing and reception of these works is a nuanced understanding of their political import: he discusses Walpole's attempt to forge an aristocratic identity, the loyalist affiliations of many neglected works of the 1790s, the subversive reputation of The Monk, and the ways in which Radcliffean romance proved congenial to conservative critics.
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