The Gothic and the Rule of the Law, 1764-1820

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Thresholds

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 1-18

3. Fictions of Origin

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 19-36

4. ‘Written in the Black Letter’: The Gothic and/in the Rule of Law

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 37-54

5. Spectres of Law in The Castle of Otranto

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 55-65

6. Clara Reeve and the Problem of Romance

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 66-83

7. The Law’s Gothic Space: Sophia Lee’s The Recess

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 84-94

8. A Maternal Tale Unfolds — Radcliffean Gothic

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 95-115

9. A Supplement — Gaston de Blondeville

   • Sue Chaplin

   Pages 116-124

10. Before the Law — Godwin’s Caleb Williams

    • Sue Chaplin

    Pages 125-142

11. In Excess — Godwin’s St Leon and Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer

    • Sue Chaplin

    Pages 143-164

12. Conclusion: Frankenstein — Reproducing the Gothic

    • Sue Chaplin

    Pages 165-177

13. Back Matter

    Pages 178-183

    PDF

This book is the first full-length theoretical and historical study of the relation between early Gothic fiction and an emerging modern rule of law. The work identifies not only a political and cultural, but also an ontological relation between what critics have conceptualized as 'Gothic' and the nature and function of modern juridical power.

• bibliography
• concept
• fiction
• gothic
• knowledge
• nature
• British and Irish Literature

• Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

  Sue Chaplin

SUE CHAPLIN is Senior Lecturer in English at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, where she specialises in Romantic-era writing and Gothic fiction. She is the author of Law, Sensibility and the Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Women's Fiction (2004).

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