Abstract
Lethbridge investigates the heroism which is negotiated through gothic and sensation fiction, tracing the large-scale movement from an interrogation of traditional models of the heroic in the late eighteenth to a more inclusive and reworked model in the late nineteenth century. The examples discussed range from Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The gothic tries to overcome the fragmentations of modernity by staging processes that create narrative cohesion. In this context the struggle over narrative authority frequently represents a struggle over the interpretation of heroic action.
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Lethbridge, S. (2017). Negotiating Modernity, Modernising Heroes: Heroes and Heroines in Gothic and Sensation Fiction of the Long Nineteenth Century. In: Korte, B., Lethbridge, S. (eds) Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction Since 1800. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33557-5_2
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