Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764-1832. (Book Reviews).

Publication: Studies in Romanticism

Publication Date: 22-SEP-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Boston University

James Watt. Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764-1832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. 205. $54.95.

This concise book begins with a timely acknowledgement that the genre of Gothic fiction should itself be seen as a "relatively modern construct." James Wart's concern is to take apart some of the elements from which that construct has been assembled, in order to reveal some of the conflicts and differences that can be found within it; in his own words, to "explore some of the connections between the Gothic and other forms of contemporary fiction, and examine neglected as well as canonical works, in order to assess the diverse range of possibilities which the category of romance offered to various Gothic works and their writers." Understandably, then, the very term "Gothic" is opened up for our inspection, especially in its complex connections with the more capacious term "romance," and contradictory political and cultural impulses behind, and enshrined within, the uses of the term are presented to us.

As Watt ruefully acknowledges, however, no matter how radical or discriminating one's plan for querying and dismantling the Gothic, one has always to start in the same place, and accordingly the first chapter is devoted to Horace Walpole; and, indeed, in part to The Castle of Otranto, but Watt is less concerned with adding further comment to the already overflowing cabinet of criticism on this text than with examining what one might call Walpole's "authorial positionality." I have to say that I find this approach, which recurs throughout the book, a challenging but also not an entirely satisfactory one. There are moments when it leads...

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