Dissertation, Yale University, 1975
The dissertation describes a cluster of important thematic conventions in the Gothic novel, the interrelationships among them, and their influence on some early Victorian writing. It treats the persistence and development, through increasingly sophisticated psychological and linguistic articulations, of conventions of isolation and immobilization. Live burial, sleeplike and deathlike states, and the unspeakable are among the salient conventions. —From the Abstract
CONTENTS
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter I. The Structure of Gothic Convention: Mostly Melmoth
Chapter II. Language as Live Burial: Thomas De Quincey
Chapter III. Immediacy, Doubleness, and the Unspeakable: Wuthering Heights and Villette
Afterword: Of Wandering
Selected bibliography