Distributed for University of Wales Press
Coasts and the Gothic
Literature, Littoral Cultures, and Haunted Shores
Examines the longstanding relationship between coastal environments and the Gothic imagination.
Coasts are vital but often unsettled sites in ecological, political, national, and cultural terms. Coasts and the Gothic demonstrates the importance of the coast to the Gothic literary tradition; it highlights the value of thinking through the Gothic to enrich our understanding of littoral spaces around the world and the meanings with which they have been invested. Just as coasts often invite us to think beyond the borders of nations and states, Coasts and the Gothic adopts a deliberately global perspective in its exploration of the Gothic coast. The writings of both canonical and lesser known Gothic authors illuminate the rich and varied ways by which our shores have been found to be haunted: chapters explore literature produced in and about Britain, the US, Mexico, South Africa, the Andaman Islands, Rapa Nui, and China.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Gothic Coasts
Emily Alder and Jimmy Packham
Part I: Shifting Sands: Post/Colonial Coastal Histories and Hauntings
1. The Haunted Coast: Water Spirits and Ghosts in Meg Vandermerwe’s The Woman of the Stone Sea
Confidence Joseph
2. Island Shores, Peripherality and Spectres That Connect: Andaman Islands in Postcolonial Island Literatures
Arunima Bhattacharya
3. ‘Typhoon and terror in Hong-Kong harbour’: Globalgothic and Weird Tales of the China Coast
Jimmy Packham
4. Fear of the Unknown: Popular Culture and the Gothic Re-imagining of Rapa Nui
Ian Conrich
5. Tláloc and Chac Mool Over Mexico City: The Haunting of Aztec Water Deities on Mexico City
Antonio Alcalá González
Part II: Beach Bodies and Coastal Erosion: Loss, Legacies and Littoral Desire
6. ‘White snakes of sea-foam’: Coastal Space and the Lesbian Gothic in Emily M. Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines
Rachel M. Friars
7. Seaside Suicides, Shipwrecks and Spectrality: Shores in Six Novels by Mary Shelley
Liz Yuen-Yuk Wan
8. Where Past and Present Collide: Haunted Seascapes and Gothic Exile in William Godwin’s Deloraine
Sophia Lange
9. ‘Lost in the Scillies, I’ve heerd tell’: Tracking the Skeleton of the Lost Land of Lyonesse in the Archipelagic Work of Bram Stoker
Beth Howell
10. Shoring the Fragments: On Writing at the Tideline
Catherine Spooner