Gothic writing and political theology

 A new scholar book with Brontë-related content:

Theology, Horror and Fiction
A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century
by Jonathan Greenaway

Bloomsbury Academic

ISBN: 9781501351785

14 Jan 2021

Surpassing scholarly discourse surrounding the emergent secularism of the 19th century, Theology, Horror and Fiction argues that the Victorian Gothic is a genre fascinated with the immaterial. Through close readings of popular Gothic novels across the 19th century - Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others - Jonathan Greenaway demonstrates that to understand and read Gothic novels is to be drawn into the discourses of theology. Despite the differences in time, place and context that informed the writers of these stories, the Gothic novel is irreducibly fascinated with religious and theological ideas, and this angle has been often overlooked in broader scholarly investigations into the intersections between literature and religion. Combining historical theological awareness with interventions into contemporary theology, particularly around imaginative apologetics and theology and the arts, Jonathan Greenaway offers the beginnings of a modern theology of the Gothic.

The book includes the chapter: "Gothic writing and political theology: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre as theological texts".