Fashioning Gothic bodies

This study explores the role played by clothing in the discourses of the Gothic. It makes an explicit connection between the veils, masks, and disguises of gothic convention and historically specific fashion discourses, from the revealing chemise-dress popularised by Queen Marie Antoinette to the subcultural style of contemporary goths. In so doing, it sheds light on the cultural construction of gothic bodies.

Taking an original, interdisciplinary approach, Catherine Spooner offers readings of literary, cinematic, and popular cultural texts in the context of fashion from the 1790s to the 1990s. Progressing chronologically from the novels of Radcliffe and Lewis through the "sensation" fiction of the Victorian period and the gothic fiction of the "fin-de-siècle," the text culminates with 20th-century film and the supposed resurgence of the gothic in pre-millennial culture.

Fashioning Gothic Bodies should be of interest to students working on the gothic in literary, film, and cultural studies, as well as to literary scholars and fashion theoreticians.