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{"id":18729,"date":"2017-03-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=452"},"modified":"2017-03-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T00:00:00","slug":"happy-gothic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/03\/happy-gothic\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Gothic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

W<\/span>hat is \u201cthe Gothic\u201d? Answers vary, and that is, Catherine Spooner argues (in Post-Millennial Gothic<\/em><\/a>), because Gothic bears \u201cmultivalent meanings\u201d and \u201chas adapted and changed with the times\u201d (9\u201310).<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a recent development: \u201cAfter Gothic\u2019s initial phase of popularity fizzled out around 1820, it quickly renewed itself in the form of penny dreadfuls, the ghost story and the sensation novel. Many of these forms were, significantly, derided as weakened, recycled versions of more vigorous originals.\u201d That was unfair: \u201cGothic is relentlessly adaptive and will continue to find new outlets and hybrid forms\u201d (10).<\/p>\n

Spooner\u2019s book is a study of the recent rise of \u201chappy Gothic,\u201d Gothic touched with comedy and romance, which she finds in film, TV, and fiction. \u201cCampy\u201d Gothic gets at the point, and Spooner cites Susan Sontag\u2019s \u201cNotes on Camp\u201d as an influential inspiration for her own reflections (22-3).<\/p>\n

Not that happy Gothic is new. Horace Walpole\u2019s 1764 Castle of Otranto<\/em> had comic scenes, \u201cin imitation of Shakespearean tragedy\u201d (22); the book \u201crevels in its own Gothicness and possesses a curious lightness of touch\u201d (23). Bret Harte and Oscar Wilde touched up their Gothic excursions with comedy as well.<\/p>\n

In highlighting the importance of comedy and romance in contemporary Gothic, Spooner challenges a familiar explanation for the prominence of Gothic in contemporary culture, namely, that it\u2019s a reflection of the anxieties of late modernity, or the fears and trauma of our post-9\/11 world. That narrative is only persuasive if one ignores the happy, satirical Goths, which, Spooner argues, form a substantial tribe of their own.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"