Gothic Romanticism: Architecture, Politics, and Literary Form

"Duggett’s focus is not on Gothic fiction in the Romantic period, but on the wider and more challenging field of cultural Gothicism – profoundly and actively social and political, and integral to the advent of Romanticism. In fluent prose and with telling rigour, Duggett develops new ways of understanding Gothicism through an approach that is refreshingly historicist and culturally ambitious, and which encompasses the literary uses of architecture, national and international politics, and educational theory. What arises from this strikingly original analysis is a significant recasting of William Wordsworth as the chief architect of emergent Gothic culture, as well as sophisticated new models of both Gothicism and Romanticism that promise to inspire further important work."--Nick Groom, Professor of English, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus

"Duggett achieves a subtle tracing of the complex and ambivalent trope of the Gothic as it appears, often in occluded form, in a number of Wordsworth's works. His handling of the political writing is exceptionally illuminating."--Tim Fulford, Professor of English, Nottingham Trent University