Suicide and the Gothic

Hardback

Main Details

Title Suicide and the Gothic
Authors and Contributors      Edited by William Hughes
Edited by Andrew Smith
SeriesInternational Gothic Series
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:208
Dimensions(mm): Height 216,Width 138
Category/GenreLiterary theory
Literary studies - c 1500 to c 1800
Literary studies - poetry and poets
Literary studies - fiction, novelists and prose writers
ISBN/Barcode 9781526120083
ClassificationsDewey:809.38729
Audience
General
Illustrations 10 black & white illustrations

Publishing Details

Publisher Manchester University Press
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publication Date 5 August 2019
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Suicide and the Gothic is the first protracted study of how the act of self-destruction recurs and functions within one of the most enduring and popular forms of fiction. Comprising eleven original essays and an authoritative introduction, this collection explores how the act of suicide has been portrayed, interrogated and pathologised from the eighteenth century to the present. The featured fictions embrace both canonical and the less-studied texts and examine the crisis of suicide - a crisis that has personal, familial, religious, legal and medical implications - in European, American and Asian contexts. Featuring detailed interventions into the understanding of texts as temporally distant as Thomas Percy's Reliques and Patricia Highsmith's crime fictions, and movements as diverse as Wertherism, Romanticism and fin-de-siecle decadence, Suicide and the Gothic provides a comprehensive and compelling overview of this recurrent crisis in fiction and culture. -- .

Author Biography

William Hughes is Professor of Medical Humanities and Gothic Literature at Bath Spa University Andrew Smith is Professor of Nineteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Sheffield -- .