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understand the claims to historical veracity as a figure for their ‘truthfulness’, their social utility, a point underlined by the generic allusion this gesture makes to historical epic at the highly valued end of the ordering of the arts. But as Gothic texts conceal an impulse to subvert the hegemonic values they protectively clothe themselves in, such appeals are frequently made in
‘resurrection’ of the author’s own work, the name Burke intensifies the aura of the supernatural around James by hinting that he may really have lain in the grave. James’s second false death is rather more dramatic. Here, if there is an allusion, a suggestion that more is being resurrected than a fictional character, it is perhaps best characterised as a more generic allusion to the conventions of