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RR 2013/263 The Encyclopedia of the Gothic General editors William Hughes, David Punter and Andrew Smith Wiley-Blackwell Malden, MA and Oxford 2013 2 vols ISBN 978 1 4051 8290 4 £199 $395 Also available online
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature
Keywords Encyclopedias, Literature
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-04-2013-0098
As a genre, the Gothic has always been characterised by its eclecticism and fluidity. As Anthony Mandai, one contributor to this new publication in the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature series points out, the mode engages religion, myth, science, philosophy, art and music as well as literary texts. Not only that, but the very meaning of the term "Gothic" has been critically contested and has evolved and diversified, so that, as Hughes, Punter and Smith admit in their introduction, any endeavour at organization into an encyclopedia must remain a highly provisional one. This book is the first attempt at a comprehensive coverage since the Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature (Snodgrass, 2004), which, the editors argue, did not include the "diverse range of subjects and national contexts" discussed here. This is a bold claim, but one validated, mostly, by the new work's sheer size and impressive range.
The three editors, all leading Gothic specialists at universities in the UK, set out their own aims clearly and economically in their brief introductory essay. This will be a useful start for readers already acquainted with the genre, although a chronology would have helped contextualise the subject for those completely new to it. Anyway, the introduction summarises developments in criticism of Gothic, from Dorothy Scarborough's The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (Scarborough, 1917),...