This book offers the first full length study on the pervasive archetype of The Gothic Forest in Western culture. The idea of the forest as deep, dark, and dangerous has an extensive history and continues to resonate throughout contemporary popular culture. The Forest and the EcoGothic examines both why we fear the forest and how exactly these fears manifest in our stories. It draws on and furthers the nascent field of the ecoGothic, which seeks to explore the intersections between ecocriticism and Gothic studies. In the age of the Anthropocene, this work importantly interrogates our relationship to and understandings of the more-than-human world. This work introduces the trope of the Gothic forest, as well as important critical contexts for its discussion, and examines the three main ways in which this trope manifests: as a living, animated threat; as a traditional habitat for monsters; and as a dangerous site for human settlement. This book will appeal to students and scholars with interests in horror and the Gothic, ecohorror and the ecoGothic, environmentalism, ecocriticism, and popular culture more broadly. The accessibility of the subject of ¿The Deep Dark Woods¿, coupled with increasingly mainstream interests in interactions between humanity and nature, means this work will also be of keen interest to the general public.

Elizabeth Parker has lectured in English Literature and Popular Culture at a number of universities across the UK and Ireland. She is the founding editor of the journal Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic. Her research interests include the intersections between popular culture, horror, the Gothic, and the environmental humanities.

Chapter 1: Theorising the Forest: Approaching a Dark Ecology.- Chapter 2: 'What if it's the Trees?': The Animated Forest.- Chapter 3: Where the Wild Things Are: Monsters in the Forest.- Chapter 4: 'It isn't Right to Build so Close to the Woods': Humans in the Forest.- Conclusion.