Gothic Metaphysics is a radical departure from Freudian-centred criticism of Gothic literature. It aims to explore our modern dilemma in the time of the Anthropocene, by bringing to light the role of Gothic since its inception in 1764 in holding space for a worldview familiar to certain mystical traditions - such as alchemy, which invoked a living cosmos yet later deemed 'uncanny' and anachronistic by Freud. In developing this idea, this book explores the influence of the Middle Ages on the emergence of Gothic as an encrypted genre, the site of a 'live burial' of 'animism' that has emerged in the notion of 'quantum entanglement' best described by Jung, and in Pauli's synchronicity linking alchemy and quantum mechanics. This relationship finds itself in dialogue with the Gothic's long-held concern for the 'sentience of space and place', as described by Gothic scholar Fredrick S. Frank. The present volume, then, is multivalent and explores how Gothic has sustained the view of a sentient world despite the disqualification of nature - not only in respect to the extirpation of animism as a worldview, but also with regard to an affirmation of consciousness beyond that of human exceptionalism. Book jacket.
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