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Gothic

Gothic Immortality in A Christmas Carol

July 2, 2019

academia, criticism, Gothic, immortality

Note: the following article on Gothic immortality in A Christmas Carol is a modified excerpt (pp. 63-64) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see the relevant page on the main website.

(Note: Also take a look at the article on immortality in Bram Stoker’s Dracula)

The complexity of Gothic immortality is apparent in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which arguably still remains an under-analyzed, deceptively simple text. Perhaps due to the rather jovial mood of the story – and certainly of the implied outcome – certain important Gothic devices can pass unnoticed. That is especially true for issues pertaining to temporality, reality, and immortality.

Gothic Immortality in A Christmas Carol — Gothic immortality in *A Christmas Carol* is about facing that which is beyond representation; death, the ultimate sublime

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Review of The Shadow of the Wind

May 30, 2019

Book Review, Criticism

book, fiction, Gothic, literature, review, Spain, Zafón

Some time ago, when I reviewed Michel Laub’s Diary of the Fall, I mentioned how sometimes all the ingredients can be there but the recipe is still a failure. Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind is somewhat similar, I’m afraid. All the ingredients are there, yes. It kinda works, and yet it doesn’t.

To be fair, I think Zafón’s novel works comparatively better. That is, one can still read it and somewhat enjoy it. However, The Shadow of the Wind aspires to be a Gothic tale. And to this Gothic fiction specialist, it comes off as a failed attempt.

the shadow of the wind review — There is a sustained attempt to present *The Shadow of the Wind* as a Gothic tale, taking advantage of the settings. But although all the checkboxes are ticked, something is amiss.

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Immortality in Dracula: Dialectics of Ambiguity

May 25, 2019

Criticism

academia, criticism, Dracula, Gothic, immortality

Note: the following article on immortality in Dracula is a modified excerpt (pp. 64-67) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

(Note: Also take a look at the article on immortality in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol)

Immortality in Dracula acquires ominous tints. The curse is not only construed as the inability to find peace, but also as the pressing need to attack others for nutrition. The suggestion of a possible reversal of the ageing process appears for the first time in Dracula’s castle, when Jonathan Harker sees the Count in his box “but looking as if his youth had been half renewed” (D 59).

When Jonathan relives the experience on English soil later on, the Count has “grown young” (D 184) – an oxymoron of sorts, as it includes two meanings with conflicting arrows of time.

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