Introduction: A Decade of Dreams and Nightmares: Popular Gothic in the 1980s

Ní Fhlainn, Sorcha ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4895-0780 (2022) Introduction: A Decade of Dreams and Nightmares: Popular Gothic in the 1980s. Gothic Studies, 24 (2). pp. 111-117. ISSN 2050-456X

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Abstract

This special edition of Gothic Studies is concerned with the Gothic significance and legacy of the 1980s, a decade that remains a site of contemporary fascination in the 21st century. While many disparage the decade as a period of soulless commercialism, avid consumerism, and a distinct period in time that fashion forgot, the 1980s introduced new modes of communication, new commercial appreciation for Gothic and horror texts, and is now, in the 21st century, suffused with nostalgic appropriation and returns. The seeds of discontent in our contentious and fractured present were largely sown in the 1980s, making it an important, if divisive, (and richly Gothic) period. We find ourselves haunted by the 1980s in this volume.