Introduction

Abstract

and Keywords Where Gothic criticism has attended to religious themes at all, it has been reductive, and not paid attention to creative theological work being performed through the texts. This book theologizes the Gothic by attending to its narration of the rupture of the Reformation both as Protestant escape but also as something to be mourned, especially the loss of mediating spiritual practices. The politics of the Glorious Revolution replays this double gesture in Whig and Tory modes. The Introduction lays out briefly the argument and structure of the book, from the Whig Providentialism of Part I, through the examination of Scottish Calvinist duality in Part II, the attention to ideas of blood and sacrifice in Irish Gothic in Part III, to the confrontation of the materialism that ensues from this hollowed out cultural imaginary in Part IV, where Gothic becomes increasingly theological throughout the nineteenth century, re-enchanting the material.