Abstract-Inevitably wrought by the socio-historical context in which they occur, literary genres transform in the course of history, and gothic is not an exception. Since its rise in the late eighteenth century, the gothic genre has significantly evolved: from ruins, graveyards, and vampires to echoes of romantic imagination and towards gothic science-fiction. This study argues that gothic has renewed itself in the postmodern context, in the sense that the characteristic features of the genre as materialized in the supernatural are replaced with mysteries, terrors, and ghosts that haunt the contemporary self's inner mind. Thus a proliferation of vampires, doubles and ghosts has given way to the haunted vaults and obscure shadows within the characters' inner worlds. In particular, this paper addresses the concept of self and the postmodern gothic as reincarnated in Paul Austers' The New York Trilogy by relating the notion of 'self' to space, self-reflexivity, the uncanny, and doubles.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.