A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares

Rating:
Summary: Coulda been a contender
Review: I was drawn to this author's full-length work of lit crit by his critical apparatus to the Penguin "Picture of Dorian Gray", which was one of the most useful introduction and notes I've come across: lucid, insightful and showed me things I wouldn't have noted myself. So it was with high expectations I ordered and read this volume.

And, happily, it met these expectations in part. The opening chapters avoid theoretical academese and offer a viable way of reading Victorian Gothic fiction. However, the longer the book goes on, the more repetitive it becomes and offers sentences such as:

"Whilst it has been suggested that appropriate location still played a part in staging this return as Gothic scenario, by establishing the modernity of the context into which the atavistic past intrudes, the taxonomical focus on "development" as a measure of contemporaneity meant that as an individual could "embody" the past, then atavism could potentially crop up anywhere". (p.153)

You see my point.

The latter chapters alternate falling into this technospeak, and the arguments become simultaneously less cogently argued and more diffuse. Ultimately I found myself skimming the very end as I finally lost patience with the book.

Mr. Mighall stands at the decision point whether to pursue a writing career based on the lucid persona of the Penguin introductions (his Dr. Jekyll, so to speak) or the obfuscation and diffuse arguments of his Academic writings (his Mr. Hyde). Once down one path, it can easily overwhelm the other. He is well too aware of the dangers of leading a double life.

Rating:
Summary: Coulda been a contender
Review: I was drawn to this author's full-length work of lit crit by his critical apparatus to the Penguin "Picture of Dorian Gray", which was one of the most useful introduction and notes I've come across: lucid, insightful and showed me things I wouldn't have noted myself. So it was with high expectations I ordered and read this volume.

And, happily, it met these expectations in part. The opening chapters avoid theoretical academese and offer a viable way of reading Victorian Gothic fiction. However, the longer the book goes on, the more repetitive it becomes and offers sentences such as:

"Whilst it has been suggested that appropriate location still played a part in staging this return as Gothic scenario, by establishing the modernity of the context into which the atavistic past intrudes, the taxonomical focus on "development" as a measure of contemporaneity meant that as an individual could "embody" the past, then atavism could potentially crop up anywhere". (p.153)

You see my point.

The latter chapters alternate falling into this technospeak, and the arguments become simultaneously less cogently argued and more diffuse. Ultimately I found myself skimming the very end as I finally lost patience with the book.

Mr. Mighall stands at the decision point whether to pursue a writing career based on the lucid persona of the Penguin introductions (his Dr. Jekyll, so to speak) or the obfuscation and diffuse arguments of his Academic writings (his Mr. Hyde). Once down one path, it can easily overwhelm the other. He is well too aware of the dangers of leading a double life.