My title suggests a rather straightforward enterprise: I want to account for the enormous popularity of the Gothic — both novels and films — since the Second World War. However, the title proposes more questions than it answers.
Occult, Spiritual Movements and Esoteric Doctrines in Russia
After the collapse of the communist system, it was not only the established denominations (the Russian Orthodox Church, various Protestant churches) that experienced a boom in Russia, as people tried to fill the spiritual and ideological vacuum left behind by the previous system.
Undead Introduction to the Vampire and the Monstrous Other
Since their animation out of folk materials in the nineteenth-century by Polidori, as Varney, and in Le Fanu and Stoker, vampires have been continually reborn in modern culture.
Foreword: Disability, Metonymic Disruption, and the Gothic
Blind. Vampire. Amputee. Zombie. These labels serve to identify and categorize the subject to whom they are applied. In some ways, they are essentializing. Each conjures up a specific image: dark glasses, fangs, prosthetic limbs, rotting flesh.
The Rise of Luciferians and the Fall of the Knights Templars
In the thirteenth-century, a group of people called Luciferians attracted papal attention for Devil worship, and this time there can be little doubt that this is exactly what was going on. The Pope sent Conrad of Marburg, a gentleman described as a “sadistic fanatic who had been spiritual director of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia and had delighted in beating and humiliating her,” to Germany in order to squash the heresy taking place there.
Cults and Sects Accused by the Recipients of Divine Grace
One of the first groups accused by the Church of worshipping Satan in the traditionally accepted way were the Paulicians. They were a group of Armenians who lived in the Southeastern part of the Empire, out of the direct control of the Armenian Church.
New Directions in Gothic Media and Popular Culture
The Gothic as a phenomenon is commonly identified as beginning with Horace Walpole’s novel ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (1764), which was followed by Clara Reeve’s ‘The Old English Baron’ (1778), the romances of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis’ ‘The Monk’ (1796).
