{"id":27742,"date":"2014-10-03T19:15:06","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T11:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=27742"},"modified":"2014-10-03T18:12:01","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T10:12:01","slug":"london-exhibit-explores-centuries-of-gothic-thrills-from-dracula-to-alexander-mcqueen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/10\/03\/london-exhibit-explores-centuries-of-gothic-thrills-from-dracula-to-alexander-mcqueen\/","title":{"rendered":"London exhibit explores centuries of gothic thrills, from \u2018Dracula\u2019 to Alexander McQueen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J64QLn_a72g\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>LONDON\u2014There\u2019s a part of us that loves to be scared.<\/p>\n<p>How else to explain the popularity of stories featuring haunted castles, lurking monsters and restless ghosts?<\/p>\n<p>Collectively they form a genre known as gothic, the subject of a new exhibition at the British Library that charts 250 years of gothic chills, thrills and bloody excess flowing from the pages of Mary Shelley\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d to the clothes of Alexander McQueen.<\/p>\n<p>The story starts in 1764, when English author Horace Walpole had a vivid dream about a giant armoured hand on a staircase in an ancient castle. The next morning he began to write \u201cThe Castle of Otranto,\u201d a fantastical novel he subtitled \u201cA Gothic Story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A genre was born.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery single gothic trope you can imagine is in \u2018The Castle of Otranto,\u201d\u2018 lead curator Tim Pye said Thursday. \u201cAn increasingly deranged tyrant chasing after virginal maidens &#8230; crumbling castles &#8230; battling knights &#8230; a general air of foreboding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd in among it all, you\u2019ve got supernatural elements: ghosts, giants, paintings that come down from the wall and walk around the castle,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Readers loved it, and the book remains in print today.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition features rare manuscripts from the library\u2019s collection, along with movie posters, film clips and objects from around the world\u2014including a vampire-slaying kit, complete with Victorian-era crucifix, stakes, mallet, prayer book and pistol.<\/p>\n<p>There is Shelley\u2019s handwritten manuscript for \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d with notes from her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley\u2014and a letter from their friend, Lord Byron, pronouncing the tale \u201ca very good work for a girl of 18.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The show traces the genre through the Victorian \u201cpenny dreadfuls\u201d to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe and onto novels such as Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s \u201cDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde\u201d and Bram Stoker\u2019s \u201cDracula.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pye calls the endlessly adapted vampire tale \u201cthe most enduring gothic novel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gothic crops up in unexpected places, such as in the work of social chronicler Jane Austen. The exhibition gathers together rare copies of the seven \u201cNorthanger Horrids,\u201d horror stories named in Austen\u2019s Gothic-influenced novel \u201cNorthanger Abbey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The gothic bloodline still runs strong in movies such as Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s \u201cThe Birds,\u201d Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cThe Shining,\u201d the Twilight book and movie series, and zombie thrillers including \u201cThe Walking Dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In music, it emerges through bands such as Bauhaus and The Sisters of Mercy while in fashion, it gives its name to the black-clad Goth subculture. A star lot in the exhibition is a black lace dress and a headdress topped with taxidermy antlers by the late couturier McQueen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a universal emotion that\u2019s never going to go away\u2014that love of being terrified,\u201d Pye said.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cTerror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination\u201d is at the British Library from Friday until Jan. 20.<\/em><\/p>\n<h6>Online<\/h6>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/\">http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON\u2014There\u2019s a part of us that loves to be scared. How else to explain the popularity of stories featuring haunted &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art-and-culture","mauthors-jill-lawless","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}