Projects
Gothic Fictions: Emotion, Contagion, and the Transformation of Experience in Modernity
Gothic Fiction is the most important prose genre of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Drawing on recent developments in cultural theory, this project is the first to study Gothic Fiction as a literary system, marked by its construction of fictional worlds radically incommensurate with "reality". The project offers a powerful revision of previous accounts of Gothic’s imagined realities, their ability to rouse the emotions of readers, and their consequent impact on the real world. It contributes to debates about the nature of experience, the emotions prompted by imagined/virtual worlds, the dissemination of these emotions through imitation and contagion, and the role of literature in modernity.
Source of description: Information from the provider
Fields of research
Literature and cultural studies, Literature of the 18th century, Literature of the 19th centuryGothic Fiction
Links
Contact
Prof. Dr. Peter Otto
Institutions
University of Melbourne
Faculty of Arts