Dark’s value crept in: New Gothic Poetics and Formations of the Uncanny

Despite the extensive academic discussions of contemporary gothic fiction, there has been scant acknowledgement of the existence of a contemporary gothic poetics. This thesis argues, in practical and theoretical terms, for the existence of a contemporary gothic poetics and proposes five new forms of the uncanny. The first part of the thesis comprises of a poetry manuscript, Trinkets, whose volume and form are coextensive with the gothic ideas and forms of the uncanny discussed in the second part of the thesis. The second part of the thesis, Dark’s value crept in, explores the prevalence of gothic themes, motifs, language, imagery and atmospheres in contemporary British and US-American poetry through presenting case studies of the poetry of Emily Berry and Cynthia Cruz. I advance here five new forms of the uncanny: Too lessness: a smaller, almost identical version of a larger thing and/or a lack of something. Too muchness: overstimulation or an excess of something to the point of oversaturation. Immorality linked with God or religious figures and/or a process of the sacred becoming mundane or vice versa. Mystery over cause of death, for example when there is an unclear cause of death which creates gaps and silences in knowledge and language. Processes of sanitization that involve concealing or ridding something of undesirable attributes which leads to a haunting of these attributes and the threat of a return. These new forms enhance new understandings of the uncanny as they interact with contemporary cultural shifts and odd symptomology. They can be used to track changing representations of the uncanny.