This book explores the captivating intersection of lunar influence and the Gothic imagination, revealing how the moon has shaped narratives of horror, mystery, and transformation across cultures and media. Edited by Elana Gomel and Simon Bacon, this volume delves into the genre of Lunar Gothic, tracing its roots from ancient folklore to contemporary science fiction and horror. Readers will encounter a diverse array of essays that examine the moon's role as both a setting and a character in Gothic narratives. From the haunting presence of lunar deities and werewolves to the eerie landscapes of the moon in science fiction, this collection uncovers the moon's dual nature as a symbol of both enlightenment and terror. Contributors explore themes such as gender, identity, and the supernatural, offering fresh perspectives on the moon's enduring impact on the human psyche. A must-read for scholars and enthusiasts of the Gothic, science fiction, and cultural studies, this book invites readers to reconsider the moon's place in our collective imagination. Whether you are a researcher, student, or curious reader, Lunar Gothic offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking exploration of the moon's dark allure and its influence on storytelling across time and space.
Chapter 1: Introduction and Recommended Reading.
Chapter 2: He looks
not like the People of the lower Orb: Behns The Emperor of the Moon as
Proto-Lunar Gothic.
Chapter 3: Phases of the Moon in Varney the Vampire; or,
the Feast of Blood.
Chapter 4: Satire, Science, and Skepticism: Viewing the
Lunar Hoaxes of Edgar Allen Poe and Richard Adams Locke as Discourse on
Uncertainty in the Antebellum Period.
Chapter 5: When the Full Moon Rises:
Masculinities, Aging, and Updating the Lycanthropic Myth in Stephen Kings
Cycle of the Werewolf.
Chapter 6: the terror of the rustics; or, Witches
and Werewolves: Lunar and ecoGothic Monstrosities in Catherine Crowes A
Story of a Weir-Wolf (1846) and The Nightside of Nature (1847).
Chapter 7:
Children of the Nights Light: The Moon as a Structuring Element of Vampire
Fiction from Polidoris The Vampyre to The Twilight Saga.
Chapter 8: Crackle
and Drag: Sylvia Plaths lunar Gothic in The Moon and the Yew Tree, The
Rival and Edge..
Chapter 9: Illuminating the Darkness: Lunar
Representation in Childrens Literature.
Chapter 10: The Lunar Poetics of
Transformation in The Yellow Wallpaper.
Chapter 11: Lunacy: Anxieties on
Modernity in Luigi Bazzonis Footprints in the Moon.
Chapter 12: The Moon as
Mirror in The Hungry Moon, Waking the Moon, and Moondial.
Chapter 13: Lunar
Gothic and the Grotesque in Hushang Golshiris The wolf.
Chapter 14: The
Moon in Requiem for a Beast: An Apophasis of Colonial Transgression and
Indigenous Suppression.
Chapter 15: Moon, Music, and Melancholia: Gothic
Aesthetics in Kuroshitisujis Lacrimosa.
Chapter 16: Blood Moon: Lunar
Monstrous Spaces in Gothic Science Fiction.
Chapter 17: Sterility Across
Chasms: Dead Worlds and Technological Imaginations in Meredith Ann Pierces
Darkangel Series.
Elana Gomel is an associate professor at the Department of English and American Studies at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and a fiction writer. She has taught and researched at Princeton, Stanford, University of Hong Kong, and Venice International University. She is the author of six academic books and numerous articles on subjects such as narrative theory, posthumanism, science fiction, Dickens, and Victorian culture. She is author of Bloodscripts: Writing the Violent Subject (2003), Narrative Space and Time: Representing Impossible Topologies in Literature (2014) and Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule (2014), and the editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy (2022).
Simon Bacon is an independent scholar based in Pozna, Poland. He has written and edited 25+ books including Becoming Vampire (2017), The Gothic: A Reader (2018), Eco-vampires (2019), The Anthropocene and the Undead (2022), Nosferatu in the 21st Century (2023), 1000 Vampires on Screen (2 volumes, 2023), The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (2024), and The Palgrave Handbook of the Zombie (forthcoming).
