Post 3 (suggested soundtrack – The Amphetameanies, ‘The Devil Lives Upstairs’) To turn now to recent and contemporary examples of the Gothic from Scotland, the most renowned exponent must surely be Iain Banks. He is widely acknowledged as an important Gothic writer in general (for example he is included in the ‘contemporary Gothic’ chapter in the 2000 Companion to the Gothic, and takes his place on the core twentieth-century module of the M.Litt.). Although there are Gothic elements in Banks’ science fiction (written as Iain M. Banks), I want to focus on

  Contemporary culture is a vampire that feeds off its stories, consumes like a monster the products of the past. Alice in Disneyland, Alice in Sexland, in Otherland, Alice/Lolita, Alice on drugs, Alice’s Misadventures Underground, Alice in Cyberia, Alice role-played… and of course anyone can become an Alice in Wonderland or a Gothic Lolita Alice in Malice land just by buying a “candy stripper burlesque Gothic Lolita in Wonderland” corset or any other so called attire from the net. “Alice in Wonderland” is also the name for a syndrome, in which the pa

Here's something I came across recently - proof that the association between the Highlands of Scotland and the supernatural has become so embedded that it's open to parody: For more, see http://idigcerealkillers.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html

One City, One Book!

The modern handling of freakish physiognomy

A truth universally acknowledged?

Stuart Lindsay on Dead Set (2008)

Symposium at the University of Stirling, 24th October 2009

Post 2 (suggested soundtrack – Malcolm Middleton, ‘Death Love Depression Love Death’) As I write this (5/02/09), I am trapped on Orkney. The snow has been falling since yesterday, all planes off the island are cancelled and some of the roads are shut. I’m therefore in the perfect frame of mind for discussing J.M. Barrie’s wonderful and disturbing novella Farewell Miss Julie Logan (1931). It may come as some surprise to those of you not familiar with Barrie’s whole canon that the author most famous for Kailyard tales of couthy rural Scotland and Peter Pan pe

Gothic