Gothic Novelties
Gothic Novelties
This chapter examines the notion of dirt and abjection in more detail before exploring the ways in which these phenomena were accommodated within Victorian society. The key mechanism is understood to be that underpinning Gothic literature in which transgression is harnessed as entertainment. By exploring a case study of critique of the Anglo-Catholic confessional, the chapter explains how pleasure was generated via the invention of a sexualised and scandalous Catholicism in the minds of Protestant viewers. It is then explained how this is associated with a boom in the production of the sale of Gothic narratives in the form not only of fiction, but also of tracts and journalism. In this way the anomalous position of ritualism was rendered into financially profitable form for wider elements in society.
Keywords: dirt, confessional, Protestant, Gothic, fiction, journalism, profitable, transgression
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