Society, Culture, and the Gothic | David Punter (Essay Date 1996)
DAVID PUNTER (ESSAY DATE 1996)
SOURCE: Punter, David. "Gothic and Decadence: Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Arthur Machen." In The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day, Vol. 2, pp. 1-26. Essex, England: Longman, 1996.
In the following essay, Punter illustrates how works of Gothic literature by Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, and Arthur Machen exemplify Decadence, and asserts that each of these works question the extent to which a civilization can change, or "decline," and still retain its national and cultural identity.
What is remarkable about the 'decadent Gothic' of the 1890s is that out of a cross-genre with only doubtfully auspicious antecedents should have proceeded, in the space of eleven years, four of the most potent of modern literary myths, those articulated in Robert Louis Stevenson's...
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