The mystery, detective, suspense, gothic, spy-thriller, crime, murder novel

Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison (Prime Suspect series) I, too, dislike it — Marianne Moore Friends, I’ve embarked on a reading journey through an area mostly unfamiliar to me, and Polonius-like, can come up with only the clumsiest of labels: the mystery, detective, suspense, gothic, spy thriller, crime, murder novel. Most of the time even […]

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The Gothic

A Syllabus for a Class at the Oscher Lifelong Learning Institute at George Mason University Exploring the Gothic Day: 8 Tuesday afternoons, 2:15-3:40 pm, Sept 24th to Nov 11th Tallwood, 4210 Roberts Road. Fairfax Instructor: Ellen Moody Description of Course: This course explore varieties of gothic and its terrain which conform to recipe format. Take […]

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Breaking Bad: 2:11-13: American gothic

Skylar (Anna Gunn) to Walt (Bryan Cranston): get the fuck out Dear friends and readers, I know I said I was done with Breaking Bad, but when 3 episodes of season 2 unexpected arrived (I had called for something else which was “delayed” and had forgotten to erase these), and watched, I found myself right […]

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Contemporary gothic Shakespeare’s Richard III

The evocative set Richard and Stanley right behind him Dear friends and readers, This is to add to a chorus of praise for the production of Richard III playing this month through early March of Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Folger. Izzy and I saw it tonight and by the time we were into the […]

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PCA/ACA: abortion & feminism today; Girls & West Wing; Bronte, an 18th century actress, Grimke’s Mara & the gothic

In 1939 Wuthering Heights: Geraldine Fitzgerald played Isabella Linton, but the film-makers did not have the interest, insight, or nerve to present the range of abuse we see in the book Dear Friends and readers, My third and final blog report from the PCA/ACA conference held here in DC. For the first, on serial storying […]

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The Gothic Wanderer & Teaching the Gothic

Darkness I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went–and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions […]

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Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House & Robert Wise’s Haunting: Quintessential Gothic & Film Noir

“Hill House” — a genuine house just outside London, chosen as embodying just what Jackson imagined, and then photographed as where all the outdoor scenes around it using infrared light (1963 The Haunting) John Atkinson Grimsaw (1836-93), The Haunted House (1882) Dear Readers, Students, Friends, Tonight one of the great American gothic novels and psychological […]

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Some thoughts on “costume gothics”: aka film adaptation

Long shot: The Duchess walking away from the Grey family after giving her newborn to that family. By contrast, Duke kept mistress as the duchess’s companion, & his illegitimate children he has too, a daughter from a liaison Georgiana mothered. At the same time how beautiful the scene … Keira Knightley in Gainsborough style hat: […]

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Dickens’s “Signalman:” The Trauma of Technology; or Victorian Gothic

The train that thunders through (Dicken’s “The Signal-man” as adapted in the 1975 film) Dear friends and readers, I’ve another gothic from my Exploring the Gothic class to discuss: for this past Friday my class and I read and discussed Charles Dickens’s unusual and brief ghost story, “The Signalman.” I’ve written about Andrew Davies’s 1976 […]

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ASECS, Albuquerque: epistolary, gothic, violent, and landscape novels (from Riccoboni & LaClos to Scott & Stael’s Corinne)

Olivia Williams as Jane Austen in quiet creative reverie (Gwyneth Hughes and Anne Pivcevic, Miss Austen Regrets 2008) Dear Friends and readers, You see above my new avatar for my “Reveries under the Sign of Austen” blog. I’ve put a copy on the wall of my room too. It pictures a mood I wish I […]

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