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Le Fanu's gothic : the rhetoric of darkness / Victor Sage.

By: Sage, Victor, 1942-.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004Description: viii, 233 p. ; 23 cm.ISBN: 0333677552; 9780333677551.Subject(s): Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 1814-1873 -- Criticism and interpretation | Horror tales, English -- History and criticism | Gothic revival (Literature) -- Ireland | Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 | Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 | Language: reference & general | Literature: history & criticism | English | Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers | Literature | Ireland -- In literatureDDC classification: 823.8 SAG Summary: Sage concentrates on the development in Lefanu of hybrid forms, examining closely the corpus of this author's work from the point of view of narrative methods and implied reader positions.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Kerry North Campus Library First Floor Main 823.8 SAG (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 38888000510812
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This new study seeks to explore the relations between reader and text across the span of Sheridan Le Fanu's career, placing his early work of the 1830s in context. Sage concentrates on the development in Le Fanu of hybrid forms, which mingle satire and comedy with Gothic horror, and also discusses the early work of Uncle Silas and Carmilla , giving space to the often neglected unpublished romances.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sage concentrates on the development in Lefanu of hybrid forms, examining closely the corpus of this author's work from the point of view of narrative methods and implied reader positions.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • List of Illustrations
  • Introduction
  • Part 1 Re-Framing the Gothic
  • Two Stories: Chiaroscuro and the Politics of Superstition Gothic and Romance: Retribution and Reconciliation 'Cyclopean History'
  • The House By the Churchyard
  • Part 2 Gothic Hybrids
  • Dreadful Witness: Narrative Perversity and Wylder's Hand Magic Lanthern: Uncle Silas
  • Indirection and the Layered Text
  • Doubleplot I The Tenants of Malory
  • Doubleplot II Haunted Lives 'Carmilla': 'I'll Let You Be In My Dream If I Can Be In Yours'
  • Bibliography
  • Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Sage (Univ. of East Anglia) conducts the reader through many of Le Fanu's novels and stories, gradually building an account of what he calls Le Fanu's rhetoric of darkness. Precise and observant, the author is certainly a rhetorician: he constructs complex figural descriptions of literary texts and he identifies "demonic rhetoric" and a linguistic chiaroscuro as consistent presences. The book does not suffer from narrowness of focus; Sage refers widely to pertinent contexts, allusions, and traditions. He also assumes that his reader will not be thoroughly familiar with Le Fanu and divides many chapters between plot summary and analysis. Though Sage's complex critical figurations can at times become confusing and readers may find themselves wishing that he developed his analyses at a slower pace and greater length, the book argues effectively that Le Fanu is worthy of serious and sustained critical discussion. ^BSumming Up: Optional. Graduate and research collections. S. R. MacKenzie Davidson College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

VICTOR SAGE is Professor of English at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. He is the author of Dividing Lines (short fiction); A Mirror For Larks and Black Shawl (novels). He has published widely on the Gothic tradition, and is the editor for Penguin Classic's of Maturin's Melmouth the Wanderer and Le Fanu's Uncle Silas.
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