Financial Gothic: Monsterized Capitalism in American Gothic Fiction

Financial Gothic explores the persistent concern of American Gothic literature with finance, reading Frankensteinian monsters, haunted houses, vampires, and zombies as cultural responses to financial phenomena such as the 1929 Wall Street Crash, post-war housing debt, financial deregulation, and the 2008 Credit Crunch. It also considers the pre-existing consensus on racial readings of American gothic and how these interpretations can be expanded upon in conversation with their financial contexts.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 15 October 2023
Publisher: University of Wales Press

From 1880 to the present day, Financial Gothic delves into the enduring fascination of American Gothic literature with finance, contending that finance has always been inherently gothic. The study analyzes Frankensteinian monsters, haunted houses, vampires, and zombies in American literature and film as cultural responses to significant financial events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the 1929 Wall Street Crash, post-war housing debt, financial deregulation, and the 2008 Credit Crunch. Additionally, it explores the pre-existing consensus on racial readings of American gothic and examines how these interpretations of the slave trade can be enriched by considering their financial contexts. By drawing on contemporary insights into financialized understandings of economics within the humanities, conducting new analysis of finance as an inherently gothic phenomenon, and utilizing archival work completed on the Library of Congress's Black History Collection, Financial Gothic unveils an overlooked dimension of haunting and monstrosity within American gothic fiction.

Weight: 488g
Dimension: 144 x 224 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781837720637