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Criticism

Spatio-Temporal Ambiguities in John Richardson’s Wacousta

December 24, 2019

Criticism

academia, Canada, criticism, Gothic, symbolism, time

Note: the following article on spatio-temporal ambiguities in John Richardson’s Wacousta is a modified excerpt from the article “The ‘New World’ Gothic Monster: Spatio-Temporal Ambiguities, Male Bonding, and Nation in John Richardson’s Wacousta”, co-authored with Matti Savolainen. Savolainen, Matti & Mehtonen, Päivi (ed & intr.). Gothic Topographies – Language, Nation Building and Race. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2013

For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

Scholarly work on Canadian literature has drawn attention to the Canadian landscape, and rightfully so. With the vast icy emptiness of the north and the depressing isolation of its individual settlements, it functions as a peculiar Gothic villain.

Here, nature itself becomes a monster (Atwood 3, 19, 35, 88); an “Other”, that in its sublime characteristics inspires both terror and awe, and at the same time serves the purpose of self-definition by instigating the individual’s assessing their place in this new world. This process occurs on an unconscious level, and it is here that the Gothic, as a mode, can be detected at its greatest uniqueness.

Wacousta
Canadian wilderness achieves character status in John Richardson’s novel
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Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse: a Gothic Masterpiece

December 3, 2019

Criticism

affect, film, Gothic, grotesque, horror, review

A film review on Home for Fiction? Sort of. But this isn’t a typical review. Rather, in this post I plan to analyze how Robert Eggers’s 2019 The Lighthouse is a Gothic masterpiece.

To do that, I will really go deeply into Gothic tropes, to show the seriously great job the director did with this film. Indeed, to this Gothic specialist, The Lighthouse is a Gothic classroom. If I needed to pick only one work from the recent 10-20 years to teach someone about the Gothic, The Lighthouse would be the one.

I’ve tried to balance between not including any spoilers and still being able to talk about the Gothic tropes of the film. In all honesty, the Gothic as a mode doesn’t rely on strictness and linearity. That is, it’s about affect, not plot.

However, if you haven’t watched The Lighthouse yet and you’d like to enter the narrative without any interpretative prejudice, feel free to stop reading at this point. You can then come back to this post after you’ve watched the film.

Otherwise, if you’ve already seen the film and want to know why I consider The Lighthouse a Gothic masterpiece, read on!

The Lighthouse Gothic
As a trope, the lighthouse is a Gothic castle, containing the same kinds of allusions of hierarchy
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Gothic, Metal, and the Concept of the Unspeakable

November 27, 2019

Criticism

defiance, Gothic, metal, music, politics, society

First, a warning: This article is not about “Gothic metal” but about Gothic as a literary genre and metal as a music genre. In this post I explore their interconnection, with the concept of the unspeakable as a bridge.

In simpler terms, picture that there is something connecting, say, Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Jinjer’s “Pisces”. This something is what I refer to here as “the unspeakable”.

Two disclaimers before we begin:

  • the unspeakable is only one possible link between Gothic and metal. There can be several ways to connect them, but I choose the unspeakable as a neat “umbrella term”, in a way.
  • I’m not breaking any new ground here. Literary criticism has analyzed these concepts extensively. At best, I might be just popularizing these analyses.

And with these out of the way, let’s see how Gothic and metal might be siblings – and, more importantly, why we should care.

Gothic and metal
Freddy Lim, of Chthonic – a Taiwanese band… banned in China, thanks to their relentless political commentary. Good luck finding such lyrics in gum-chewing pop.
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