Gothic Cities: Edinburgh, Paris and Manchester in Contemporary Literature and the Cultural Imagination

Durocher, Alice (2025) Gothic Cities: Edinburgh, Paris and Manchester in Contemporary Literature and the Cultural Imagination. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

Manchester, Edinburgh, and Paris are often represented as gothicised cities, where the gothic is increasingly produced, performed, and consumed in the cities’ literature, culture, and tourism. This thesis applies transcultural and hauntological theories to representations of urban spaces to analyse the gothicisation of these cities from the nineteenth century onwards, advancing our understanding of contemporary urban gothic culture as palimpsestic and transnational in nature. I analyse contemporary representations of these gothic cities in literature and film and, building upon Emma McEvoy’s understanding of gothic tourism (2016), develop new understandings of gothic tourism that connect literature to culture. I argue that gothic attractions, which flourish in these cities, bring new cultural and literary significance to the gothicisation of urban space via intertextual exchanges between myth, literature, film and other narrative forms. This gothicisation is often achieved culturally when ghosts and historical accounts become ways to engage with the traditions and the so-called ‘authenticity’ of the city as a localised space; nevertheless these gothic cities also participate in a global gothic mode of exchange and influence that privileges heterotopic and subterranean spaces as culturally gothic sites.