Revisiting the Gothic in Literature, Science, Culture and Language
This interdisciplinary conference will explore the transformations undergone by the Gothic genre since its inception. It will discuss and analyse the development and mutation of the genre on aesthetic, thematic and linguistic levels. The trajectory of Gothic literature encompasses the dynamics of continuity and discontinuity as two defining features of the genre. In fact, the transition from Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic fiction that set the conventions of the genre, to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Dracula, and then to modern and postmodern Gothic genres (poetry, fiction, films) entails the revival and the introduction of new Gothic tropes.