Imported Genre of Local Characteristics: On Australian Colonial Gothic Fiction

With the burgeoning of cultural studies, the gothic has been hotly discussed in British and American academia since the 1980s. It has been a long held idea that Australia, which has a comparatively short history, hence of no castellated culture, has yielded few gothic tales. As a result, Australian gothic hasn't aroused much interest. The present paper firstly takes a view of the possibilities of Australia's importation of the gothic, then, studies its new development as a local genre. It will be of much importance to broaden and enrich both Australian literary study as well as gothic study.