Le Fanu's Gothic: The Rhetoric of Darkness

by V. Sage

Overview

This new study seeks to explore the relations between reader and text across the span of Sheridan Le Fanu's career, placing his early work of the 1830s in context. Sage concentrates on the development in Le Fanu of hybrid forms, which mingle satire and comedy with Gothic horror, and also discusses the early work of Uncle Silas and Carmilla , giving space to the often neglected unpublished romances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333677551
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	12/18/2003
Edition description:	2004
Pages:	233
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

VICTOR SAGE is Professor of English at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. He is the author of Dividing Lines (short fiction); A Mirror For Larks and Black Shawl (novels). He has published widely on the Gothic tradition, and is the editor for Penguin Classic's of Maturin's Melmouth the Wanderer and Le Fanu's Uncle Silas.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction PART ONE: RE-FRAMING THE GOTHIC Two Stories: Chiaroscuro and the Politics of Superstition Gothic and Romance: Retribution and Reconciliation 'Cyclopean History'; The House By the Churchyard PART TWO: GOTHIC HYBRIDS Dreadful Witness: Narrative Perversity and Wylder's Hand Magic Lanthern: Uncle Silas , Indirection and the Layered Text Doubleplot I: The Tenants of Malory Doubleplot II: Haunted Lives 'Carmilla': 'I'll Let You Be In My Dream If I Can Be In Yours' Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

'Sage's book addresses Le Fanu, and the issues his texts raise, with panache: he brings to bear a profound historical knowledge, particularly of the all-important Irish dimension of Le Fanu's work, but also - and perhaps most strikingly - a keen awareness of narrative and rhetorical devices. I think I hardly need to say more: there is no other respectable book on Le Fanu, and one is needed. Sage has, in my opinion, written it.' - Professor David Punter, University of Bristol

From the Publisher