'Really, though secretly, a papist': G.K. Chesterton's and J. Meade Falkner's rewritings of the gothic

Abstract

This article considers the rewriting of those Gothic conventions which are most symptomatic of Gothic anti-Catholicism in the works of Catholic-sympathizing authors, J. Meade Falkner, G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922, creates a priest committed to divine rationality and exposes contemporary Protestant "superstition". J. Meade's Moonfleet, inspired by Gothic revivalism - a movement in many respects antithetical to the sentiments of the Gothic novel - rewrites the relations between father and son, past and present, individual and community.