Gothic FanaticismProtestant Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Analyses the discourse and phenomenon of the religious fanatic in nineteenth-century British Gothic fiction

• Brings together the history of religious extremism in the nineteenth century with an exploration of the mindset of a fanatic through literary case studies
• Analyses fanatical characters in nineteenth-century British Gothic fiction: Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (James Hogg, 1824), Zofloya; or, The Moor (Charlotte Dacre, 1806), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818), The Last Man, (Mary Shelley, 1826), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886), The Island of Doctor Moreau (H.G. Wells, 1896), Lois the Witch (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1859), A Study in Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887), She (H. Rider Haggard, 1886), Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897), Lilith (George MacDonald, 1895), and The Blood of the Vampire (Florence Marryat, 1897)
• Sits at the intersection of literary scholarship and religious studies

This book argues that fanaticism becomes a Gothicised literary discourse that uniquely monitors the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ religion, depicting the consequences of excessive, uncritical devotion as inherently Gothic. This discourse, termed Gothic fanaticism, has the potential to make specific, incisive critiques about religion and, more troubling, to depict alternative faith practices and beliefs as monstrous. The book explores Gothic fiction’s Protestant fanatics and the slippery uses of the discourse of failed religion in a century marked with religious upheaval. It seriously considers what makes a literary character a fanatic, why religious extremism appeals to many, how the shapes of extremism operate in Gothic literature, and how fanaticism can become weaponised against fanatics themselves.