Defining the relationships between Gothic and the postcolonial

Hughes, W and Smith, A (2003) 'Defining the relationships between Gothic and the postcolonial.' Gothic Studies, 5 (2). pp. 1-6.

Abstract

The Gothic has historically maintained an intimacy with colonial issues, and in consequence with the potential for disruption and redefinition vested in the relationships between Self and Other, controlling and repressed, subaltern milieu and dominant outsider culture. Such things are the context of obvious, visible irruptions of the colonial Orientalistexotic into the genre, whether these be the absolutist power and pagan excesses of Beckford's Vathek (1786), the Moorish demonic temptations of Zofloya (1806) or the perverse, corrupting influence of a western invader upon a primitivised European in the ImmaleeIsadora episodes of Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). These are, in a sense, horrors beyond, the exoticism of time and space distancing the problematic text from the comfortable, identifiable world of the contemporary and the homely a reassurance comforting even in a reading of the Irish episodes of Melmoth the Wanderer, where geographical marginality anticipates a borderland as distant from metropolitan sensibilities as effective as those of later writers such as Hope Hodgson, Machen or Rolt. The colonial is both kept at a distance and in a state of suggestive vagueness, of resemblance rather than obvious representation, its horrors accessible though thankfully not immanent

Item Type:	Article
Note:	William Hughes and Andrew Smith also edited this special edition of the Gothic Studies journal.
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History
Divisions:	School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities
Date Deposited:	08 Feb 2016 15:48
Last Modified:	15 Aug 2021 09:41
ISSN:	1362-7937
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/6960

	Request a change to this item or report an issue
	Update item (repository staff only)