Rethinks Gothic literature in the time of the Anthropocene.
Gothic Metaphysics is a radical departure from Freudian-centered criticism of Gothic literature. Since its inception in 1764, the Gothic has held space for a worldview that acknowledged a living, even sentient, cosmos. Although it was later deemed “uncanny” and anachronistic by Freud, Jodey Castricano argues that the Gothic can still offer us an alternative vision of reality. The book explores the ways in which Gothic literature can help us bring about a paradigm shift in our relation to the planet in the time of the Anthropocene. Taking the influence of the Middle Ages and psychoanalytic thought into account, Gothic Metaphysics is a multivalent exploration of how the Gothic has sustained the viewpoint of a sentient world in spite of modern rejection.
Gothic Metaphysics is a radical departure from Freudian-centered criticism of Gothic literature. Since its inception in 1764, the Gothic has held space for a worldview that acknowledged a living, even sentient, cosmos. Although it was later deemed “uncanny” and anachronistic by Freud, Jodey Castricano argues that the Gothic can still offer us an alternative vision of reality. The book explores the ways in which Gothic literature can help us bring about a paradigm shift in our relation to the planet in the time of the Anthropocene. Taking the influence of the Middle Ages and psychoanalytic thought into account, Gothic Metaphysics is a multivalent exploration of how the Gothic has sustained the viewpoint of a sentient world in spite of modern rejection.
288 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2021
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene
Chapter 2: Occult Subjects: Parapsychology and the Foreign Body in Psychoanalysis
Chapter 3: There Is No Occult-Free Zone: Transgenerational Emergence
Chapter 4: An Other-Valued Reality: Animism and Literature
Chapter 5: Ghost Dance
Chapter 6: Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and the Strange Question of Trans-Subjectivity
Chapter 7: Learning to Talk with Ghosts: Canadian Gothic and the Poetics of Haunting in Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach
Chapter 8: EcoGothic and the Anthropocene: The Ecological Subject
Chapter 9: Afterwor(l)ds: All My Relations
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Occult Subjects: Parapsychology and the Foreign Body in Psychoanalysis
Chapter 3: There Is No Occult-Free Zone: Transgenerational Emergence
Chapter 4: An Other-Valued Reality: Animism and Literature
Chapter 5: Ghost Dance
Chapter 6: Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and the Strange Question of Trans-Subjectivity
Chapter 7: Learning to Talk with Ghosts: Canadian Gothic and the Poetics of Haunting in Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach
Chapter 8: EcoGothic and the Anthropocene: The Ecological Subject
Chapter 9: Afterwor(l)ds: All My Relations
Bibliography