Michael Gamer. Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, And Canon-Formation (Book Review‪)‬

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. 255. $59.95. The gothic was a harbinger of romanticism, but, aside from asserting the priority of the gothic, that post hoc formula leaves the historical relationship entirely unexplained. We often talk loosely about movements in literary history affecting other movements, but just what does that involve? Exactly how did the gothic cause the romantic movement to be what it was? What were the agents and agencies involved and how did they operate? Michael Gamer's astute monograph has not only given a convincing historical account of how the prior existence of the gothic as a genre affected three important writers at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but has done so in a way that suggests the more general value of his methods.