The Gothic and the Everyday ― Living Gothic

Numerous dimensions of the Gothic and its relationship to the past are still under-explored. With this in mind, The Gothic and the Everyday aims to draw attention to one facet of the Gothic in particular: the Gothic in relation to lived experience. While it has been embodied in various cultural trends and behaviours, the broader idea of 'living Gothic', as a term encompassing histories, practices, and legacies, has yet to find a coherent definition and place. This book, then, serves to regenerate interest in the Gothic within the experiential contexts of history, folklore, and tradition, and the idea of Gothic remains in contemporary life. By using the term 'living', the book recalls a collection of experiences that constructs the everyday in its social, cultural, and imaginary incarnations. In this sense, 'living' also takes on multiple and multi-faceted connotations that resonate feelings of both finality and immortality, bygone experience, and future fantasy.

Lorna Piatti-Farnell is Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. She is President of the Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia, and Gothic Area Chair for the Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ). She is also Editor in Chief of Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies. Her publications to date include three monographs, Food and Culture in Contemporary American Fiction (2011), Beef: A Global History (2013), and The Vampire in Contemporary Popular Literature (2014). She is currently editing a collection on The Lord of the Rings and fan cultures, and working on a new monograph on food and horror in contemporary film.

Maria Beville is Lecturer in English Literature at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. Her research interests lie primarily at the intersections of Gothic studies, cultural theory, and contemporary fiction and film. Her books include The Unnameable Monster in Literature and Film (2013) and Gothic-postmodernism (2009). As co-ordinator of the Centre for Studies in Otherness, she is also editor-general of the journal Otherness: Essays and Studies. She is currently working on a study of the Gothic in relation to participatory cultures as evidenced in recent popular horror texts.