The Twilight of the Gothic?

Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal Romance, 19912012

By (author) Joseph Crawford

Publication date:

15 May 2014

Length of book:

368 pages

Publisher

University of Wales Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9781783160648

Winner of the 2015 Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize.

This book explores the history of the paranormal romance genre; from its origins in the revisionist horror fiction of the 1970s, via its emergence as a minor sub-genre of romantic fiction in the early 1990s, to its contemporary expansion in recent years into an often-controversial genre of mainstream fiction. Tracing the genre from its roots in older Gothic fiction written by and for women, it explores the interconnected histories of Gothic and romantic fiction, from Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen in the eighteenth century to Buffy, Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries in the present day. In doing so, it investigates the extent to which the post-Twilight paranormal romance really does represent a break from older traditions of Gothic fiction - and just what it is about the genre that has made it so extraordinarily divisive, captivating millions of readers whilst simultaneously infuriating and repelling so many others.