The Literature Network - Peter Trachtenberg

Peter Trachtenberg

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From: Artforum
Date: 20040701
Author:Trachtenberg, Peter

THE TROPIC OF GOTHIC Peter Trachtenberg PORT MUNGO BY PATRICK MCGRATH NEWYORK: KNOPF. 242 PAGES. $24.

Ever since the publication of Horace Walpole's The Castle ofOtranto, the gothic genre has been a forum for the return of the repressed. Its ruined castles, honeycombed with dungeons and secret passageways, are architectural models of the unconscious, and what dwells in them are the things we choose to be unconscious of: our blighted loves, our defiled virgins and deformed half brothers, our mad, our murdered, and their nagging, resentful ghosts. The problem inherent in the genre, however, is ...

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