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The last decade has seen a diffusion of the Gothic across a wide range of cultural sites, a relative explosion of Gothic images and narratives prompting a renewed critical interest in the genre. However, very little sustained attention has been paid to what we might term 'Gothic television' until this point. This book fills this gap by offering an analysis of where and how the genre might be located on British and US television, from the start of television broadcasting to the present day. In this analysis, Gothic television is understood as a domestic form of a genre which is deeply concerned with the domestic, writing stories of unspeakable family secrets and homely trauma large across the television screen. The book begins with a discussion on two divergent strands of Gothic television that developed in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s, charting the emergence of the restrained, suggestive ghost story and the effects-laden, supernatural horror tale. It then focuses on the adaptation of what has been termed 'female Gothic' or 'women's Gothic' novels. The book moves on to discuss two hybrid forms of Gothic drama in the 1960s, the Gothic family sitcoms The Munsters and The Addams Family, and the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. Finally, it looks at some recent examples of Gothic television in the United States, starting with a discussion of the long-form serial drama, Twin Peaks, as the initiator of a trend for dark, uncanny drama on North American television.
boundaries, the usefulness of this generic category is revealed, as is the extent of the Gothic’s popularity on television. This chapter centres on a discussion of two hybrid forms of Gothic drama in the 1960s, firstly the Gothic family sitcoms The Munsters (Kayro-Vue Productions, 1964–66) and The Addams Family (Filmways, 1964–66), and secondly the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (Dan Curtis
colonies that not only failed to take root, but further antagonized the Irish. The second phase (1575–1606) began with the rebellion and confiscatory defeat of the Earl of Desmond, which enabled the Privy Council to distribute about one fourth of the Munster province among courtiers and investors. This phase continued with a series of unsuccessful royally approved attempts to establish a foothold on the North American coast and ended with the destruction of both the Munster Plantation and the Irish forces of resistance. The final period (1606–40) saw several major
development within the treatises produced in the 1580s and early 1590s, we will first examine the treatises attendant upon the establishment of the Munster Plantation. The Munster Plantation As soon as the fifteenth earl of Desmond took the decisive step into rebellion in 1579 officials, military officers and would-be colonists began contemplating the expectant land rush which would occur throughout Munster.6 This was not the first time that the southern province had been the focus of land speculation. As early as 1569 continuing uncertainty over Desmond’s future as a
Spenser, by not limiting Faeryland specifically to England, may have considered Ireland part of Elizabeth’s ‘kingdome [of] Faery land’, perhaps as a distant province. In any case, ten years after the meeting in Munster between Raleigh and Spenser that led to the latter’s visit to Elizabeth’s court and the printing of the first part of The Faerie Queene , Spenser’s home, his authority, and his dreams were ‘ashes’, and Ireland only a ‘wretched realme’. At the end of Elizabeth’s reign the Munster settlement was indeed in ruins, a failure like
Council conceived of the Munster Plantation as a solution to the problem of repeated rebellions by disaffected nobles and their clan followers. Courtiers and capitalists received land grants for the purpose of settling numbers of reliable English farmers and craftsmen on the large, but non-contiguous landholdings confiscated from the traitorous Earl of Desmond, his kinsmen, and supporters. The Plantation began in 1586 and was overthrown in 1598 when the Irish of Munster joined the ongoing Nine Years War in Ulster. The Irish defeat at Kinsale in 1601, or the final
of the proto-colonial or ‘Plantation’ period, and archaeological research on the Munster colony in the Irish Republic has followed the initiative of work undertaken on the Ulster colony in Northern Ireland. 4 Proto-colonial activities The context of colonization Elizabethan colonization is often viewed as something outside of – separate from – the overall course of European expansion. On the east side of the Atlantic, it was once seen as an expression of the British Empire to come
, Darryl Gless, Julian Lethbridge, Sean Aube, and anonymous readers for the press for their comments. The chapter was first presented on 25 February 2006 as ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s Poetry and the Munster Plantation’ for the conference, Plantation Ireland: settlement and material culture, c.1550–c.1700, sponsored by the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group and the Society for Irish Historical Settlement, Cork, Ireland. Select proceedings from that conference and additional papers (some referenced here) are found in James Lyttleton and Colin Rynne, eds, Plantation Ireland
destructive conflicts between the Irish nobility of the late sixteenth century.5 The essence of this thesis was that Corkery’s reading of Irish history was fanciful and that the Munster poetic tradition celebrated by Corkery was detached from the real lives and experiences of Irish peasantry. O’Connor was less concerned with the epistemology of Irish historical culture than with the sectarianism of Corkery’s poetic canon. Specifically, he attacked Corkery’s critique of the Irish poet Brian Merriman, a Clare man and a Protestant. The Ireland revealed in The Bell included
described the Saga as ‘ The Munsters written by Alan Bennett high on episodes of Coronation Street , all beautifully rendered in a style equal parts Robert Crumb and The Bash Street Kids ’ Leo Baxendale.’ 5 I want to take a close look at the first Bojeffries stories that introduced the characters and setting before working through their different social