Dickens and the Gothic provides a critical focus on representations of social and psychological entrapment which demonstrates how Dickens employs the Gothic to evaluate how institutions and formations of history impinge on the individual. An analysis of these forms of Gothic entrapment reveals how these institutions and representations of public and personal history function Gothically in Dickens, because they hold back other, putatively reformist, ambitions. To be trapped in an institution such as a prison, or by the machinations of a law court, or haunted by history, or to be haunted by ghosts, represent forms of Gothic entrapment which this study examines both psychologically and sociologically.
| ISBN: | 9781009539104 |
| Publication date: | 17th October 2024 |
| Author: | Andrew Smith |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 75 pages |
| Series: | Elements in the Gothic |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Classic horror and ghost stories |