Excavating the Castle

Investigates Gothic’s place in English literary history from 1814 to 1921, revealing its earlier and deeper integration into the selective tradition than previously recognized, and challenging long-held assumptions in Gothic studies and literary historiography

Excavating the Castle demonstrates that the serious and respectable historiography of the Gothic begins not in 1921 but in the early nineteenth century and that the Gothic concept crystallized more than half a century earlier than historians of the Gothic had realized previously. 

This book seeks to excavate the changing status of the Gothic within what, after Raymond Williams, we might call the selective tradition, from approximately 1814 to 1921. Excavating the Castle demonstrates that the Gothic novel was present in the selective tradition almost from its inception, was present in the first durable consolidation of English literary history written after its emergence, and that the Gothic concept crystalized more than half a century earlier than historians of the Gothic had realized previously. The historiography of the Gothic has long been considered a settled story, though the findings of this book call that story into significant question. How did we miss so much of the story? This is above all a work of literary history, but it is a work of literary history designed to serve the needs of the field of Gothic studies. That said, it is also about more than the Gothic, implicating much larger issues related to the history of ideas; book history; information and library sciences; the materials, methods, and practice of literary history; the digital humanities; and even questions of individual positionality and human contingency.