The Gothic Other Softcover Book by Ruth Bienstock

The Gothic Other
Racial and Social Constructions in the Literary Imagination
Edited by Ruth Bienstock Anolik and Douglas L. Howard

320pp. softcover 2004

Literary use of the Gothic is marked by an anxious encounter with otherness, with the dark and mysterious unknown. From its earliest manifestations in the turbulent eighteenth century, this seemingly escapist mode has provided for authors a useful ground upon which to safely confront very real fears and horrors.

The essays here examine texts in which Gothic fear is relocated onto the figure of the racial and social Other, the Other who replaces the supernatural ghost or grotesque monster as the code for mystery and danger, ultimately becoming as horrifying, threatening and unknowable as the typical Gothic manifestation. The range of essays reveals that writers from many canons and cultures are attracted to the Gothic as a ready medium for expression of racial and social anxieties. The essays are grouped into sections that focus on such topics as race, religion, class, and centers of power.

About the Author
Ruth Bienstock Anolik teaches at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Her articles have been published in Modern Language Studies, Studies in Jewish Literature, and a number of other journals and collections. She lives in Narbeth, Pennsylvania. Douglas L. Howard is the Writing Center Coordinator and an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Suffolk County Community College in Selden, New York. His publications include articles in Literature and Theology, The Chronicle of Higher Education and This Thing of Ours: Investigating the Sopranos (Columbia University Press, 2002). He lives in Plainview, New York.