Late October is here, and when the moon rides high in silver clouds above the windswept uplands of the Hill Country, our thoughts sometimes turn to the eerie pleasures of the haunting and mysterious genre of fiction known as the Gothic novel.
Perhaps the ACC Library’s virtual Halloween display caught your eye; maybe you’re reading Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s horror novel Mexican Gothic, named after a literary genre of its own, or watching Lovecraft Country, the novel-turned-television show currently unfolding on HBO. Or maybe the Library Research Guide on English Literature captured your attention. However it happened, you’ve suddenly got the urge to follow the sound of distant laughter through the corridors of a crumbling mansion, your path through the cobwebs illuminated only by a guttering candle as creatures of the night skitter past your feet.
Sadly, ACC doesn’t have any crumbling mansions for you to explore, but we do offer ACC students a headier thrill: a journey into the annals of ancient scholarship, a virtual exhumation of the dusty tomes once held in the wizened fingers of wise women and men, upon the yellowed pages of which they fervently etched their troubled thoughts. Would you like to take a self-guided tour of this magically preserved library? All you need is your ACC eID and password and an internet connection.
JSTOR is a searchable online database that provides archival access to millions of scholarly articles, books, and primary sources. JSTOR is great for established topics (perfect for Great Questions assignments!), and it generally features content more than five years old. It contains lots of treatment of literature, history, art, film, dance, art history, architecture, anthropology, archaeology, and classical studies, to name just a few subjects.
While you can find a free version of JSTOR online, you’ll want to make sure that you get all the benefits of your ACC affiliation by going through the ACC library website and signing in with your ACC eID and password, which will grant you instant access to tens of thousands of articles.
Start by going to the library home page at library.austincc.edu, and click on A-Z List of Databases.
Look under the Js for the JSTOR link and click to log in your ACC eID and password.
On the JSTOR landing page, check at the top of the page for the phrase “Access provided by Austin Community College” to be sure you’re signed in.
Then click on the Advanced Search link under the search box.
Here are a few challenges to sharpen your exploratory skills:
Find the earliest reference in the JSTOR results to the phrase “Gothic novel.”
Hint: Once you’ve done a keyword search on “Gothic novel,” change the “Sort by: Relevance” option at the top of the results lists to “Sort by: Oldest”
Explore the connection between the Gothic genre and other literary genres like magical realism or science fiction.
Hint: Try an advanced search with keywords “Gothic” in one box and “magical realism” (or “science fiction”) in another, using “All Fields” as the search setting for each box.
Explore the Gothic influence upon the literature of various geographies and languages through literary analysis of famous works.
Hint: Use Advanced Search to search for “Gothic” AND different languages, nationalities, or regions, for example “Gothic” AND “Mexican” Once you have the names of some specific authors of Gothic fiction in hand, try searching those names in quotes using “All Fields” as the search setting.
Below are citations for some Gothic fiction literary criticism articles available in JSTOR. Try looking them up using the “item title” search parameter and the name of the article. Now that you’ve had some experience with searches of your own, which keywords would you use to search for these or similar titles?
Brantlinger, Patrick. “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 14, no. 1, 1980, pp. 30–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1345322. Accessed 22 Oct. 2020.
Mouat, Ricardo Gutiérrez. “Gothic Fuentes.” Revista Hispánica Moderna, vol. 57, no. 1/2, 2004, pp. 297–313. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30203772. Accessed 19 Oct. 2020.
Smethurst, James. “Invented by Horror: The Gothic and African American Literary Ideology in Native Son.” African American Review, vol. 35, no. 1, 2001, pp. 29–40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2903332. Accessed 19 Oct. 2020.
Image Citation:
Created by John Taylor Arms (American, 1887-1953). The Gothic Spirit, "From Set or Series": Gargoyle Series. 1922. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/AWSS35953_35953_42396608
