On The Gothic Tradition and Colonial Guilt

April 13, 2016 10:05 AM

I'm looking for an essay I read in a collection of critical essays on the origins of literary genres - its thesis was that since the gothic tradition often reversed or undermined mainstream Victorian ideals, it could be seen as a sublimated response to colonial guilt that couldn't be expressed in public. The argument tied it into the practice of keeping looted Egyptian mummies in parlors and the first sprouts of Gothic arriving from the idea of something old and dead and foreign in your home that might be out for revenge. Ring any bells?
posted by The Whelk to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Possibly Sara Burns, “Better for Haunts: Victorian Houses and the Modern Imagination"? Link to a pdf of the article here.
posted by PussKillian at 11:30 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Is it this? https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/endsandbeginnings/bulfinonmarsh.pdf
posted by ian1977 at 11:44 AM on April 13, 2016

Response by poster: It's the second one! Thanks!
posted by The Whelk at 2:33 PM on April 14, 2016