The Gothic people enter European history during the Roman Iron Age. Several groups of Goths come under the power of the Huns while other Gothic groups seek refuge within the borders of the Roman Empire. Groups fleeing across the Danube River defeated Roman troops at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. These Goths will later migrate further and eventually form the Visigothic Kingdom in present-day Spain and France under King Alaric I. In the 5th century, the Goths gained their freedom from the power of the Huns and formed the Ostrogothic Kingdom under King Theodoric the Great in present-day Italy. Finally, the Ostrogothic Kingdom was defeated by the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century and the Visigothic Kingdom was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate in the 8th century. What remains are the Gothic historical texts that claim a Scandinavian origin. Ever since these times, this origin has been debated by historians, archaeologists, and linguists. This essay investigates the support of this Scandinavian origin in four source materials. The ancient textual sources, linguistics, material culture and DNA-studies and then analyze and compare the results. The DNA-studies show that parts of the gothic people had a connection with Scandinavia and parts of them had a genetic diversity. This together with the results of the ancient texts, linguistics and material culture indicate a strong connection between Scandinavia and the gothic people and a probable Scandinavian origin at least amongst the gothic elite.

This thesis critically examines the intersections between whiteness and terror/horror in texts produced during the long eighteenth century. I reframe the Gothic as a migratory Transatlantic, colonial mode that problematizes eighteenth-century distinctions between terror as a form of the intellectual sublime and horror as a bodily reaction that generates shock and aversion. Drawing upon contemporary Black Feminism(s), I analyze Enlightenment theories of mind and objective reason and consider whiteness as a spectral and material presence throughout long eighteenth-century writing, with which the Gothic mode grapples directly. Highlighting how the Gothic operates in Transatlantic spaces that rehearse the legacies of violence enacted against Black and racialized peoples, my project contends that classifications such as terror-Gothic (i.e., psychological horror) and horror-Gothic (i.e., bodily horror) are arbitrary and reductive; instead, the Gothic responds to colonialism by imagining that the experience of embodied knowledge is a conflation of both. Centered primarily as a study of literary methodology, this thesis presents readings of three works of literature that operate within and against the backdrop of Anglo-American Enlightenment myths of white supremacy: Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale (1798), and Matthew Lewis’s Journal of a West India Proprietor: Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica (1834). This thesis puts questions to each text, regarding the reproduction, mobilization, and subversion of whiteness in their portrayal of terror/horror; the use of mobility to illustrate preoccupations with displacement, socio-political, and cultural conditions; the depiction of Black life, agency, and subjectivity despite oppression. By unraveling complexities of whiteness and terror/horror, noting the Gothic modality’s haunting/haunted relationship to colonial discourses of power, this study emphasizes the enduring relevance of these themes in understanding contemporary racial imaginaries. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project examines the entangled relationship between whiteness and terror/horror in literature from the long eighteenth century. Drawing from contemporary Black Feminist theories to analyze Transatlantic works that make use of the Gothic mode, this study reframes historical concepts of terror and horror as separate affective categories, reimagining the foundational elements of Gothicism, to underscore the inseparable nature of psychological and physical manifestations of colonial oppression. Focusing on race and racialization, I illustrate how specific conceptions of whiteness generated, bolstered, and deployed terror/horror to shape the experiences of Black humans inhabiting Transatlantic locations in the period and beyond. I think with(in) Black Feminism(s) to delve into the impact of Enlightenment philosophy on Gothic narratives that grapple with slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. By retheorizing the Gothic as a migratory mode, I emphasize its capabilities to address the haunting legacies of whiteness and its violent manifestations across time and space.

This thesis examines the Gothic element in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown and his influence on future writers.

Hin Ondes hus är Aurora Ljungstedts debutroman från 1853. Tidigare forskning har uppmärksammat romanen som en av Sveriges första och mest renodlade gotiska romaner. Hur ideologiska aspekter såsom genusfrågor kommer till uttryck i texten är dock outforskat till övervägande del. Den här studiens syfte är därför att öka förståelsen för hur romanens gotiska element kan kopplas till genusfrågor. Detta åstadkoms genom att romanen analyseras utifrån teoribildningen female gothic. Analysen visar att romanens dramaturgi och skräckskildringar till övervägande del följer de konventioner som förknippats med female gothic. Typiskt gotiska motiv, som dubbelgångare, ödesbestämdhet och känslan av das unheimliche bidrar också till att kvinnan skildras som utsatt och maktlöshet i hemmet, äktenskapet och patriarkatet. En implikation av analysen är att Ljungstedts texter redan tidigt i författarskapet präglades av ett kvinnoperspektiv. / Hin Ondes hus [The House of the Devil] is Aurora Ljungstedt’s debut novel from 1853. Earlier research has recognized the novel as one of Sweden’s first and most distinctive Gothic novels. However, in what ways ideological aspects, such as gender issues, are expressed in the text is largely unexplored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to further the understanding of how the novel's Gothic elements are related to gender issues. This is achieved by analyzing the novel using Female Gothic theory. The analysis shows that the novel's plot and depictions of fear largely align with the conventions associated with the Female Gothic. Typical Gothic motifs, such as doubles, a sense of predetermination, and a sense of das unheimliche also contribute in portraying the woman as vulnerable and powerless in the home, in marriage and in patriarchy. One implication of the analysis is that Ljungstedt's texts were characterized by a woman’s perspective from early on in her writing.

This thesis examines the portrayal of gentleman collectors in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century literature, arguing that they often find themselves challenged and destabilised by their collections. The collecting depicted contrasts revealingly with the Enlightenment practices of classification, taxonomy, and commodification, associated with the growth of both the public museum and the market economy. The dominance of such practices was bound up with the way they promoted subject-object relations that defined and empowered masculine identity. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer note that “[i]n the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty” (3). That being so, this study explores how the drive to classify and commodify the material world found oppositional, fictional form in gothicly inflected texts depicting a fascinating but frightening world of unknowable, alien objects and abject, emasculated subjects. The study draws upon Fred Botting’s contention that gothic extremes are a reaction to the “framework” of “reductive and normalising limits of bourgeois morality and modes of production” (89). Examining novels and short stories by Richard Marsh, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, Vernon Lee, George Gissing, Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker, Mary Cholmondeley, and Mary Ward, the thesis shows how gothicised instances of unproductive-masochism, pathological collecting, thwarted professionals, and emasculated heirs broke down the “framework” within which men and material culture were understood to interact productively and safely. Individual chapters dealing respectively with acquisition, possession, dissemination and inheritance, respond to the recent “material turn” in the humanities, bringing together literary criticism and historically grounded scholarship to reveal the collector and the collection as the locus 3 for concerns with masculinity and materiality that preoccupied a turn-of-the-century mindset.

The enclosed room is in classic Gothic novels closely connected to its female characters, and often works as a mean to suppress them. Clive Barker, however, while working within the Gothic genre, uses the enclosed room in novel ways in The Hellbound Heart, creating a type of Gothic female character that is different from the classical stereotype. By comparing the enclosed room and the female characters in Barker’s The Hellbound Heart to the classical model, in particular as represented by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, this essay will show how Barker uses the room in a new way: he breaks away from the classic motif of the room as a means of female sexual oppression and instead depicts female characters taking charge of the room and therefore of themselves and their own sexuality.

Autobiographies and documentaries usually aim to elicit a discussion about social issues by shocking and horrifying readers and viewers, often through graphic imagery. This study's ambition is to examine how literary documentary borrows from the gothic tradition to depict real societal issues. My aim is to show how the gothic style transcends the borders of the genre and that literary documentary about self-harm tends to work through the same thematic and narrative structures as the literary gothic. With a focus on contemporary depictions of self-harm and mental illness in young women and girls in Sweden, this analysis explore how the function of sexuality, gender and self-harm in gothic horror can be applied on these texts. At the same time this study explores how selfharming women tend to use gothic imagery to portray the horrors of their own reality that is saturated with extreme and negative emotions. For comparison, two famous depictions of girls going through puberty from the literary horror genre; Carrie and The Exorcist, are examined to further anchor the connection between femininity, blood and puberty in the gothic theoretical field.

According to Pierre Nora, “[m]emory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition”. Drawing on theories of memory and psychoanalysis, my thesis examines the role of memory as a narrative of the past in late twentieth-century and twenty-first-century Scottish literature. I challenge Nora’s supposition that memory and history are fundamentally opposed and I argue that modern Scottish literature uses a variety of forms of memory to interrogate traditional forms of history. In my Introduction, I set the paradigms for my investigation of memory. I examine the perceived paradox in Scottish literature between memory and history as appropriate ways to depict the past. Tracing the origins of this debate to the work of Walter Scott, I argue that he sets the precedent for writers of modernity, where the concerns are amplified in late twentieth and twenty-first century literature and criticism. While literary criticism, such as the work of Cairns Craig and Eleanor Bell, studies the trope of history, Scottish fiction, such as the writing of Alasdair Gray, James Robertson, and John Burnside, asserts the position of memory as a useful way of studying the past. Chapter One examines the transmission of memory. Using George Mackay Brown’s Greenvoe, I consider the implications of three methods of transferring memory. Mrs McKee’s refusal to disclose her experience indicates a refusal to mourn loss and to transmit memory. Skarf’s revision of historical narratives indicates a desire to share experience. The Mystery of the Ancient Horsemen demonstrates the use of ritual in the preservation and the communication of the past for future generations. Chapter Two studies the Gothic fiction of Emma Tennant and Elspeth Barker. I examine sensory experience as indicative of the interior and non-linear structure of memory. I argue that the refusal to accept personal and familial loss reveals problematic forms of memory. Chapter Three traces unacknowledged memory in Alice Thompson’s Pharos. I use Nicolas Abraham’s theory of the transgenerational phantom to consider the effects of this undisclosed memory. I argue that the past and its deliberate suppression haunt future generations. Chapter Four considers the use of nostalgia as a form of memory. I investigate the perceptions and definitions of nostalgia, particularly its use as a representation of the Scottish national past. Using Neil Gunn’s Highland River, I identify nostalgia’s diverse functions. I examine nostalgia as a way in which, through the Scottish diaspora, memory is transferred and exhibited beyond national boundaries. Chapter Five builds on the previous chapter and extends the analysis of the ways nostalgia functions. I study nostalgia’s manifestations in the diasporic Scottish-Canadian literature of Sara Jeanette Duncan, John Buchan, Eric McCormack, and Alastair MacLeod.

The following is a multi-genre collection, including short shorts, short fiction, non-fiction, and drama. Each piece utilizes Gothic motifs and dark comedy in an effort to explore life and loss.

The majority of this thesis consists of my creative work in poetry, accompanied by researched information and concepts that serve to contextualize and illuminate the poems themselves and my creative process. Key areas of scholarship that underlie my poetry include the tropes and motifs of Gothic literature from the Romantic era to the present; the progression of women’s writing, particularly writing by women identifying as lesbian; and the conflation of female writers and characters with the concept of the ‘monstrous’ and transgressive. Also informing the two research chapters are some of the basic concepts about abjection and depression developed by philosopher and theorist Julia Kristeva. The collection of my poems contains both narrative and lyric poems. The final chapter, following on from my collection of sixty-eight poems, outlines my creative progress as I developed my particular poetic aesthetic. It is heavily informed by my growing acquaintance and comfort level with my own darkness and depression reflected in Gothic tropes, lesbian fiction, and aspects of Kristevan theory. The progression of my craft as a writer led me to strive for an effective expressive balance between the abstractions of the French Symbolists and Surrealists and a more ‘Imagistic’ focus on accurate, concrete imagery.