Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century

About the Author Jonathan Greenaway is Researcher in Theology and Horror at the University of Chester, UK. His work has appeared in the Guardian and the New York Times and he tweets @thelitcritguy. Product Description Surpassing scholarly discourse surrounding the emergent secularism of the 19th century, Theology, Horror and Fiction argues that the Victorian Gothic is a genre fascinated with the immaterial. Through close readings of popular Gothic novels across the 19th century – Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others – Jonathan Greenaway demonstrates that to understand and read Gothic novels is to be drawn into the discourses of theology. Despite the differences in time, place and context that informed the writers of these stories, the Gothic novel is irreducibly fascinated with religious and theological ideas, and this angle has been often overlooked in broader scholarly investigations into the intersections between literature and religion. Combining historical theological awareness with interventions into contemporary theology, particularly around imaginative apologetics and theology and the arts, Jonathan Greenaway offers the beginnings of a modern theology of the Gothic. Review “Brilliantly redressing the hitherto overlooked relationship between Gothic literature and theology, Greenaway's book offers a sensitive and fresh way into 19th-century imaginings of monstrosity, evil, spectrality and sin. More than a spotlight on cultural, political and psychological anxiety, Greenaway's Gothic is an access point to the inexplicable existence of the supernatural in works by Shelley, Hogg, the Brontës and Wilde. Theology, Horror and Fiction ultimately reveals God in dark and terrifying places wherein the ordinary is made strange by the religious and mystical as much as by the weird and mysterious.” ―Emma Mason, Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK, and author of Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (2018)“In Theology, Horror and Fiction, Greenaway demonstrates how 19th-century Gothic literature intervened in ongoing theological debates. But even more than this, he compellingly argues that the Gothic constituted - and continues to constitute - an imaginative theology in its own right, offering readers new ways of finding God at work in the world. In its careful examination of some of the most beloved novels of the 19th century, including Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, this deeply researched and eminently accessible study will interest literary critics, as well as historians and religious studies scholars of all levels.” ―Winter Jade Werner, Associate Professor of English, Wheaton College, USA, and author of Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature (2020)“Theology, Horror and Fiction takes its place among recent scholarship that has recognized Gothic fiction's investment in theological debate and controversy. Through a series of nuanced close readings, Jonathan Greenaway shows 19th-century Gothic writers engaging creatively and often subversively with theological ideas, from images of divine and artistic creation to Calvinist hermeneutics and critiques of predestination. Greenaway reads 19th-century Gothic fiction not only as a genre that reflects the religious debates of its time, but as a creative resource for continued reflection on theological claims in the present.” ―Simon Marsden, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Liverpool, UK, and author of The Theological Turn in Contemporary Gothic Fiction: Holy Ghosts (2018)