Wednesday 18 December 2013

Recollections - 2013-14 Session Four: Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate and the end of the our Autumn Semester Schedule



Last week the Gothic Reading Group ended its first semester of the 2013-14 year with a vibrant session on Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate. The novel itself wasn't particularly festive, but its atmosphere was suitably winterey - and that's without resorting to terrible author-name puns. Here Mark offers a brief recap of the discussion last week before previewing things to come and wishing all members and readers a very Merry Christmas.




Tuesday 10 December 2013

Sources and Resources - Background and Materials for Winterson

The Gothic Reading Group meets for its last session of 2013 this week: capping off a semester that's seen us travel from 21st century horror cinema to transatlantic 19th century fictionalisations of madness and now back (via a bit of cosmic horror) to Jeanette Winterson's 2012 novel based on the infamous Lancashire Witch trials. As you might expect from a twenty-first century re-telling of a piece of seventeenth century 'history' (and all its intervening mythologisations) there's a lot of interesting context and background available to inform our discussion of this text. In the following post Richard Gough Thomas explores some of these and others some resources for those interested in the story (or stories) of Pendle.