Gothic Bristol: City of darkness and light

Mulvey-Roberts, Marie

Abstract

Because of its links with Romanticism, Bristol has been referred to as a ‘Romantic City’, yet it could just as easily be identified with the Gothic. Over the centuries, Bristol has been the matrix for a significant number of Gothic innovations, inspirational settings and associations with writers from late eighteenth-century Gothic fiction through to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and beyond. Bristol’s dark legacy of the slave trade makes it a city of darkness as well as light, a binary opposition that is particularly conducive to the Gothic as a mode of cultural and even civic expression. This chapter will look at the dark side of Bristol through literature and also consider the relationship between Gothic architecture and writers connected with the city.

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 29-58
• Book Title: Literary Bristol: Writers and the City
• ISBN: 9781908326737
• Keywords: Gothic, Bristol, darkness, vampire, Frankenstein, Southey, slavery
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/843584
• Publisher URL: http://redcliffepress.co.uk/products-page/bristol/literary-bristol/