The main assertion of this thesis is that both 19th century and contemporary Gothic literary texts are characterised by fugitivity, embodied by the fugitive ‘figure’ which through its ambiguity is re-deploying the distinction proposed by Ross Chambers – inescapably both narrative and textual. The fugitive figure is intimately related to desire and its textual mobilisation. This mobilisation simulates the paradoxical experience of the sublime in which the pursuer of the fugitive figure is left speechless before the feared and desired unnamable other. Anne Rice’s ‘The vampire chronicles’ are discussed, as are ‘Frankenstein’, ‘The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ and ‘Dracula’. Analysis of these texts constitutes a ‘genealogy’, conceived and executed in poststructuralist terms, consisting of a deconstructive analysis inflected by psychoanalytic inputs. The genealogy is applied to indicate the importance of the family structure and its potential for dissolution in Gothic texts, and recreates a search for origins, which is a recurring theme in Gothic writing. The fugitive figure, through its embodiment of insatiable desire, is beyond either narrative or tropaic apprehension. It is in continual metamorphosis and invites pursuit in its different guises. However, although it appears as the objectified pursued, it actually arises from within the pursuer, so any attempt to arrest the disruptive flow it signifies is, although unavoidable and necessary, a self-deceptive act doomed to failure. This failure is registered simultaneously at narrative and textual levels. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study demonstrates that much of the Gothic novel's effect results from the form of the classical tragedy. Experimentation with that form as the basic structure of the novel begins with Horace Walpole, extending through Ann Radcliffe and Charles Maturin. Walpole, the innovator, uses the form--architectonic movements and particularized devices-to bring dramatic action back to a genre which was withering due to Richardson's epistolary structure. The plotting of The Castle of Otranto relies on tragic movement: exposition, complication, minor crisis, incitement of tragic force, climax, catastrophe. Also, to move action, Walpole uses peripeteia and anagnorisis more broadly than a dramatist. Because of his expanded use of the two devices, Walpole adds spectacle or the supernatural to crisis, climax, and catastrophe. Desiring to offset pathos, he creates fear--specifically terror, the fear of death.Ann Radcliffe uses Walpole's strategy in The Italian but modifies the tragic structure somewhat. Hers is a more expansive work than Otranto, and she emphasizes the ironies of her protagonist's decline. Equally important, she uses the true supernatural, she continues experimenting with minor character, and generalizing the use of peripeteia to increase ironic possibilities occurring between characters, characters and narrator, or book and audience. Because these ironies are so much like undercutting, The Italian seems more like a modern novel.Because Charles Robert Maturin was himself a dramatist, the architectonic technique of Melmoth the Wanderer is also tragic. Maturin uses the tragic form recursively, adding bewildering, ambiguous depth to the novel. The many tragedies are interlocked. Individually, each teaches about the human condition. As a whole, the tragedies are Melmoth's hell on earth, though his victims' fleshly tragedies never match his own hopeless spiritual tragedy. Structurally, Maturin uses periketeia and anagnorisis frequently, oftentimes mixing in spectacle and the supernatural. Other major contributions are Maturin's use of a temporally and spatially free protagonist and his emphasis of the fear of eternal damnation. Since that is Melmoth's final lot, the author withholds climax and catastrophe for the novel's end.Thus, the Gothic suggests itself as a source for the "dramatic novels" of later mainstream authors like George Eliot.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Carrie Sandahl, Florida State University, School of Theatre. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 15, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-194).

The figure of the Wandering Jew in British Gothic literature has been generally regarded as a static and romantic Everyman who signifies religious punishment, remorse, and alienation. In that it fails to consider the fact that the legend of the Wandering Jew signalled a noteworthy historical shift from theological to racial anti-Semitism, this reading has overlooked the significance of this figure's specific ethno-religious aspect and its relation to the figure of the vampire. It has hindered, consequently, the recognition of the Wandering Jew's relevance to the "Jewish Question," a vital issue in the construction of British national identity. In this dissertation, I chronicle the "spectropoetics" of Gothic literature---how the spectres, of Jewish difference and Jewish assimilation haunt the British Gothic novel. I trace this "spectropoetics" through medieval anti-Semitism, and consider its significance in addressing anxieties about the Crypto-Jew and the Cabala's role in secret societies during two major historic events concurrent with the period of classic Gothic literature---the Spanish Inquisition, a narrative element featured in many Gothic works, and the French Revolution, a cataclysmic event to which many Gothic works responded. In the light of this complex of concerns, I examine the role of the Wandering Jew in five Gothic works---Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk (1795), William Godwin's St. Leon (1799), Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (1872), and Brain Stoker's Dracula (1897). In my conclusion, I delineate the vampiric Wandering Jew's "eternal" role in addressing nationalist concerns by examining his symbolic preeminence in Nazi Germany.

This thesis provides a critique of the gaze in Gothic novels and French melodramas between 1790 and 1825. After situating itself historically in relation to the eighteenth century's prioritization of vision, the thesis then progresses in chapters two to seven to textual examinations of visual critiques provided by Gothic novelists. It examines the following authors: Sophia Lee; Ann Radcliffe; Matthew Lewis; the Marquis de Sade; Charles Maturin; James Hogg, and William Godwin. The thesis contends that these Gothic novelists demonstrate the function of the gaze in its most violent and reductive light. In the novels examined, the thesis posits that vision is used as a tool of power, rather than one of education and enlightenment. An examination is made of the imprisoning function of the gaze with reference to psychoanalytical essays on the gaze written by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. These essays help to promote the theory that the Gothic novels studied all portray some form of transgressive gazing: the punishment for this lies in the characters' temporary transition into some form of inanimate image. Whether this be a portrait, a statue, or a dramatic tableau, the transition is indicative of the regressive gaze to the past that the characters have been using. The eighth and final chapter of the thesis turns the focus from Gothic novels to French melodramas. This is done to represent the failure of French melodramatists to regulate the visual responses of their audiences. By examining their critical projects, and the results of them, the thesis concludes by demonstrating the practice, and failure, of the gaze.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 282-293).

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-149). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.