Financial Gothic: Monsterized Capitalism in American Gothic Fiction

(Hardback)

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Description

A new study of Gothic American fiction through the lens of capitalism.

Financial Gothic reads Frankensteinian monsters, haunted houses, vampires, and zombies in American fiction and film as cultural responses to financial phenomena from 1886 to the present day. The study also considers the preexisting consensus on racial readings of American gothic fiction, and how these interpretations of the slave trade can be expanded upon in conversation with their financial contexts.

Reviews

"Financial Gothic provides a compelling analysis of how twentieth-century gothic literature is haunted by the twinned histories of finance and slavery. The shadow world of finance is often spectral, and Amy Bride demonstrates how American literature grapples with the problem of 'zombie capitalism.'"-- "Peter Knight, professor of American studies, University of Manchester"
"Financial Gothic persuasively highlights the immense and often monstrous role that anxieties related to finance and the financial markets have played in shaping the popular American Gothic, between the early twentieth century and the present day."-- "Bernice Murphy, associate professor and lecturer in popular literature, Trinity College Dublin"
"Financial Gothic is a bold disinterment of the monstrosity that has long lain at the core of imaginative responses to money and markets in American culture. In Amy Bride's incisive analysis, both American Gothic and American capitalism are revealed to be possessed by phantoms still stranger and more potent than we knew."-- "Paul Crosthwaite, professor of modern and contemporary literature, University of Edinburgh"

Author Bio

Amy Bride is a lecturer in American studies at the University of Manchester.