Like pornography, patriotism or piety, the terms Irish and Gothic initially seem to conform to obvious, widely accepted meanings. However, encountering them in literature, painting, film or any other medium almost always elicits individual, and sometimes even contradictory, responses. With that in mind, let me begin by touching on my approach to the use of each term.

Irishness remains a vexed issue, and exploring its fragmentation and mutability stands as a topic outside the scope of this essay. In reference to it, I simply acknowledge my awareness of the provisionality of any application, and I offer a sampling of citations that present a range of points of view that have been adopted as ways of engaging the concept. One finds the same dispersion of perspectives on nationality in studies of the Irish cinema, and there, too, I will simply reference a sampling of such views rather than take up the debate over the clearest conception. Suffice it to say that I understand Irish to be a provisional term more convenient than precise.

Gothic is an equally perplexing concept, but one that because of the argument that I am making requires a bit more discussion. From its emergence in the eighteenth century, the Gothic impulse has always been to challenge perceptions of the status quo and to frustrate individual efforts to apply familiar Cartesian models to explain unique and unnerving behaviour. Despite the variety of forms these disruptions can take, two fundamental characteristics distinguish any manifestation of the Gothic: the presence of the uncanny and the immanence of menace. Further, in contrast to the Horror genre, which often evokes the supernatural in one form or another, Gothic cultivates postmodern assertions that deny the efficacy of abstract values and the existence of a metaphysical world.