Alan Moore and the Gothic Tradition

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Matthew J. A. Green
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This book explores a number of Alan Moore's works in various forms, including comics, performance, short prose and the novel, and presents a scholarly study of these texts. It offers additional readings to argue for a politically charged sense of Moore's position within the Gothic tradition, investigates surreal Englishness in The Bojeffries Saga, and discusses the doppelganger in Swamp Thing and From Hell. Radical environmental activism can be conceived as a Gothic politics invoking the malevolent spectre of a cataclysmic eco-apocalypse. The book presents Christian W. Schneider's treatment of the apocalyptic in Watchmen and a reassessment of the significance of liminality from the Gothic tradition in V for Vendetta. It explores the relationship between Moore's work and broader textual traditions, placing particular emphasis on the political and cultural significance of intertextual relationships and adaptations. A historically sensitive reading of From Hell connects Moore's concern with the urban environment to his engagement with a range of historical discourses. The book elucidates Moore's treatment of the superhero in relation to key Gothic novels such as The Castle of Otranto and presents an analysis of the nexus of group politics and survival in Watchmen. The book also engages in Moore's theories of art, magic, resurrections, and spirits in its discourse A Small Killing, A Disease of Language, and the Voice of the Fire. It also explores the insight that his adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft, which are laced with heterocosms and bricolage, can yield for broader understandings of his forays into the occult.

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‘Alan Moore is a quite extraordinary practitioner of the graphic novel. In this collection, Matthew Green has brought together a group of scholars who discuss Moore's achievement in a variety of contexts: the Gothic, certainly, but also the city, political radicalism, magic: ghosts include Blake and Lovecraft. Amply illustrated and suffused with examples of Moore's craft, Green's excellent editorship brings us a book which makes a major contribution to that most potent of contemporary fictional forms: the graphic novel.'
Professor David Punter, University of Bristol

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