Gothic Voices
The Vococentric Soundworld of Gothic Writing

This fascinating study reads Gothic fiction's terrifying and horrifying voices as they develop from the Romantic period until today.

Matt Foley (Author)

9781009162562, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 February 2023

75 pages
22.6 x 15.2 x 0.5 cm, 0.13 kg

This Element provides new ways of reading the soundscape of the Gothic text. Drawing inspiration from the field of 'sonic Gothic' studies, which has been spearheaded by the writings of Isabella van Elferen, as well as from Mladen Dolar's articulation of the psychoanalytic 'object' voice, this study introduces the critical category of 'vococentric Gothic' into Gothic scholarship. In so doing, it reads important moments in Gothic fiction when the voice takes precedence as an uncanny, monstrous or seductive object. Historically informed, the range of readings proffered demonstrate the persistence of these vocal motifs across time (from the Gothic romance to contemporary Gothic) and across intermedia forms (from literature to film to podcasts). Gothic Voices, then, provides the first dedicated account of voices of terror and horror as they develop in the Gothic mode from the Romantic period until today.

1. Impossible Voices
2. Thrilling Groans and Attentive Listening: Vococentric Gothic Romance
3. From the Ventriloquial to the Monstrous Voice in the Nineteenth-Century Gothic of Dickens and Poe
4. Vococentric Horror: Psycho-analysis and the Intermedial Monstrous Voice
5. Conclusion: The Gothic Echo Chamber and the Contemporary Horror Podcast
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Cultural studies [JFC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]