Gothic radicalism

This academic study explores how nineteenth-century Gothic literature offered a radical critique of prevailing theories like the sublime and Freudian psychoanalysis. Author Andrew Smith argues that the Gothic developed its own unique concepts of sublimity and the unconscious, effectively rewriting intellectual history before Freud's ideas were even formally articulated. The book examines works by key authors such as Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker to demonstrate this critical engagement with both idealist philosophy and psychoanalytic thought.