Accidental Migrations: An Archaeology of Gothic Discourse.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-OCT-03

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Accidental Migrations: An Archaeology of Gothic Discourse. By EDWARD H. JACOBS. (Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture) Cranbury, NJ: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2000. 295 pp. 37.50 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-83875-429-5.

Edward Jacobs's intention in this densely written monograph is to judge the impact of seventeenth-century Gothicist historiography on the Gothic aesthetic of the mid- to later eighteenth century. Establishing the credibility of this position forms the first half of the book; the second half is taken up with a reading of Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Eliza Parsons's The Mysterious Warning (1798), and Ann Radcliffe's The Italian (1797). The methodological/theoretical structure of the argument is, as Jacobs's title suggests, underpinned by Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. To this end Jacobs's introduction aims to relate the relevance of...

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