Haunted presence : the numinous in Gothic fiction /

An explanation and application of theologian Rudolf Otto's concept of the numinous, in The Idea of the Holy (1950), to major Gothic fictions. Varnado extrapolates Otto's central notion, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, into affective states, the sense of objectivity, and value elements, to focus his investigations of the centrality of realism, the feeling of the supernatural, and new themes and techniques of principal texts in the genre. The development of standard features is traced, as are ``ideograms,'' archetypes, symbolism, and the ``ontological structures'' underlying the Gothic. Otto's qualifications are frequently adduced in discussions of Walpole (the ``harmony of contrasts''), Radcliff (the sublime raised to the numinous), Lewis (the demonic), Maturin (archetype), Stoker (the rational-nonrational paradigm), and the moderns Machen, Blackwood, and Lovecraft. Separate chapters are given Shelley (moral elements, the sacred-profane theme), Poe (mysticism, the pattern of initiation into the sacred), and James (creation of an aesthetic, balance). This all-too-short study advances many useful and provocative formulations, and its themes are firmly repeated. Recommended to all literary collections, it will be most useful to graduate students and upper-division undergraduates.-L.K. Mackendrick, University of Windsor