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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Jeremy Black, "The Age of Nightmare: The Gothic and British Culture, 1750-1900" (St. Augustine's Press, 2022)
Description: Historian Jeremy Black is comprehensive, as ever, but in his treatment of the British Gothic novel his greatest service is the preservation of the detail--namely, the human impetus behind art that is often undervalued. Gothic novelists were purposeful, thoughtful, and engaged questions and feelings that ultimately shaped a century of culture. In The Age of Nightmare: The Gothic and British Culture, 1750-1900 (St. Augustine's Press, 2022), Black notes that the Gothic novel is also very much about "morality and deploying history accordingly." The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and maca...