Gothic Forms.

Format:

Video

Series:

Wonderland: Gothic ; Season 1, Episode 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stoker, Bram,.

Cultural anthropology.

Fiction.

Vampires (Character type).

Anxiety.

Architecture.

Literature.

History.

England.

Local Subjects:

Stoker, Bram,.

Cultural anthropology.

Fiction.

Vampires (Character type).

Anxiety.

Architecture.

Literature.

History.

England.

Genre:

Documentary

Physical Description:

1 online resource (49 minutes)

Place of Publication:

Montreal, QC : Sphere-Abacus Films, 2023.

Language Note:

In English.

Original language in English.

System Details:

video file

Summary:

Wonderland: Gothic is a new four-part series for television, exploring the development of "Gothic" through its various stages and developments over its 250-year life. The four programmes are filled with illustrations from literature, film, painting and performance. Wonderland: Gothic covers the phenomenon of "Gothic" - the never more popular and topical range of expression seen in novel writing, poetry, painting and film that portrays the strange, emotional, and sometimes horrific human inner life called “Gothic”. "Gothic" is represented in remarkable and varied aesthetic forms from 1780 onwards, taking in works as diverse as Dracula, Wuthering Heights, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Night of the Living Dead, and the extraordinary paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. "Gothic" expresses the rebellion of the human spirit against an over-rational world, taking in, with an overtly dramatic and often exaggerated intensity, subjects as varied as abjection, horror, repulsion, imagination, and spiritual fulfilment. "Gothic" achieved mass popularity from its inception, drawing in inspired and fascinated adherents, ranging from Sigmund Freud to the Sex Pistols. The visualisation and scenery of “Gothic” with its ruins, most notably William Beckford’s Fonthill, castles and ancient houses is a feature of the film. Examples from literature and film discussed and illustrated are wide-ranging and include Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Walter Scott, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Willkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny, the ghost stories of M R James, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, James Whale’s Frankenstein, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Notes:

Title from resource description page (viewed April 06, 2026).