Fashioning Gothic Bodies

(Paperback)

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This study explores the role played by clothing in the discourses of the Gothic. It makes an explicit connection between the veils, masks and disguises of gothic convention and historically specific fashion discourses, from the revealing chemise-dress popularized by Queen Marie Antoinette to the subcultural style of contemporary goths. In so doing it sheds light on the cultural construction of gothic bodies. Taking an original, interdisciplinary approach, Catherine Spooner offers readings of literary, cinematic and popular cultural texts in the context of fashion from the 1790s to the 1990s. Progressing chronologically from the novels of Radcliffe and Lewis through the "sensation" fiction of the Victorian period and the gothic fiction of the "fin-de-siecle", the text culminates with 20th-century film and the supposed resurgence of the gothic in pre-millennial culture. This book should be of interest to students working on the gothic in literary, film and cultural studies, as well as to literary scholars and fashion theoreticians.

Author Bio

Catherine Spooner is Lecturer in English at the University of Reading