![]() Re-Turn of the Century: Moving from the Old to the New Here we cannot find the quiet melancholy of ghosts in dusty mansions, but rather the shocking flare that illuminated first the trenches, and then the screen of the cinema. This was an era wracked by crises of identity, incalculable loss and guilt, and the terror of the monstrous, unconscious self. Indeed, the horrors of early 20th Century lie in the suddenness of its transformations and the subsequent trauma of their recollection. Thirty-two years may seem a trifling amount of time compared to the yawning centuries endured by Walpole’s crumbling ruins but this was not a time of slow, moldering grief. However, this chapter will discuss the Gothic critiques of domestic life, the popularity of psychoanalysis and Freudian theory, the outbreak of the First World War, the onset of the Great Depression, the otherworldly introduction of Lovecraftian horror and the revolutionary introduction of film. Word limits restrict the depth to which the significance of this extraordinary era may be explored. ![]() While it is not helpful to wholly segregate early 20th Century Gothic from previous literary traditions, the extraordinary social, technological and political upheaval of this period saw a rapid and transformative shift in the ways in which these narratives were expressed. Although often overshadowed by the Victorian melodrama that dominated the 19th century, the evolution of Gothic literary and cultural expressions between 19 are no less demonstrative of the mournful repression and abject dread that characterize the genre.
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