The Coherence of Gothic Conventions by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Published 1980 · 75,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Coherence of Gothic Conventions to read?
The Coherence of Gothic Conventions scores 65 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
- Semiotic and structuralist vocabulary; later sections anticipate queer theory's terminology.
- Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
- Abstraction: 75 out of 100
- Formal and semiotic analysis at a high level of generality.
- Information density: 72 out of 100
- Closely argued with sustained textual evidence.
- Narrative indirection: 18 out of 100
- The argument about indirection and concealment is itself enacted in the prose.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- Gothic symbols are the primary analytical object; the analysis is saturated with them.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Sedgwick's characteristic ironic intelligence pervades the critical register.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- The argument about the unspeakable resists full exposition.
- Structural complexity: 42 out of 100
- Organized around the central spatial opposition with cumulative development.
How The Coherence of Gothic Conventions is regarded
The Coherence of Gothic Conventions holds a literary regard score of 85 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.