When aesthetic theory makes the eye the pre-eminent organ of truth where can the unbelievable and impossibly monstrous spectacle stand? John Ruskin wrote, "To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion - all in one." But what if our clear vision falls upon sights so inconceivably hideous that our rational mind revolts at the profanity of the poetry, prophecy and religion offered?

This one arises out of a conversation which I've just had with a colleague regarding contemporary theories of the Sublime

I'm currently writing a book about popular perceptions of hypnotism in the nineteenth century - it's in two parts, the first being a reading of sources such as newspapers and journal articles, with a touch of autobiography thrown in; the second takes the literary angle

H.P. Lovecraft opens his essay ‘Notes on Writing Weird Fiction’ with the following declaration: My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualizing more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentari

There has been an overwhelming focus on a Southern Gothic in the key examples of post-modern American Gothic horror film and television, set as they frequently are in New Orleans (Interview with the Vampire, The Skeleton Key), South Carolina (American Gothic), Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico (Carnivàle), Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi (True Blood), and Florida (Invasion, Dexter). Heat and its attendant passions are clearly a significant aspect of these narratives, and the landscape of the southern states (be it the boyou, the everglades or the dustbowl) a key element in each text’s

During a conversation last week with an American exchange student taking my horror film module, he asked how I had ended up with horror cinema as my research specialism. It’s not a very complex history: like a lot of the fans who have contributed to my research over the years, I discovered quite early in life that I had a taste for the macabre, the Gothic, the scary. I knew I was not the only woman to have such tastes, yet when I first studied film it seemed there was little acknowledgement of the enthusiastic female horror film audience, either in the academy or in the industry. Choosing a

As a scholar in the field of horror cinema I consider myself fortunate to work in a most Gothic environment, for my (admittedly rather mundane) office at St Mary’s University College looks out over Horace Walpole’s Little Gothick Castle in Strawberry Hill. In a further example of propitious fate (I am even tempted to call it serendipity), just as I was being invited to contribute this guest blog to Gothic Imagination the newly-restored house was being unveiled from behind scaffolding and plastic sheeting, with the Friends of Strawberry Hill gearing up for its reopening. To begin this po

      I am just back from attending the Urban Gothic Conference at Liverpool John Moore University on Saturday 24 April. The conference programme promised an interesting debate on a range of Gothic topics in relation to the city as haunted space, uncanny homelessness, postmodern and historical palimpsests and disturbed suburbia, amongst others; under the auspices of a beautiful (if not exactly Gothic), sunny day, the event unravelled as a great interdisciplinary forum, which exceeded my expectations and made the Saturday morning early rise more than worthwhile: accompanying t

Gothic draws attention to the monstrous, the horrific, that which exceeds the limits imposed by moral taboos, the so-called laws of nature, as well as cultural inhibitions. The Gothic subject is typically one in a state of excess – excessive desire, excessive fear, excessive weakness; challenging the boundaries of normative acceptability,  Gothic self-consciously interrogates definitions of humanity. Frankenstein and his creature, Jekyll/Hyde, Dracula, Dorian Gray all point to hybrid models of humanity, all coexisting in the multiple simultaneity of a split ego. What is human? The Ox

There is nothing new in the reproduction of Gothic motifs and certainly nothing new in the exploitation of death for business. What I am interested in, however, is to consider the deeper impact of consumerism, with its focus on desire, on the consuming self in relation to the cultural commodification of Gothic motifs. Gothic is excess and we live, apparently, in excess times: excessive eating, excessive dieting, excessive fandom, excessive hatred. In an article reviewing the ‘Return to the Baroque’ exhibition currently hosted in Naples, Rachel Spence briefly discussed the significance of D