astles in gothic titles, it makes sense. The x of y? Here seman-tics helps; if we look at the x in the formula, we find that romance appearsin 7 percent of the cases (The Romance of the Pyrenees), a cluster of genreindicators like mysteries, horrors, secrets, adventures in 13 percent (TheHorrors of Oakendale Abbey), personal nouns in 34 percent (Emmeline, orthe Orphan of the Castle), and space nouns in 41 percent of the total (fig.20): from The Castle of Otranto in 1764 to The Mines of Wielitzka and TheRock of Glotzden a half century later. So, in three fourths of the cases the xof y specifies an x that is either a person or a space. And when we movefrom the subject of the formula to its predicate—from the x to the y—whatwe find is so striking that I don’t even need a graph to point it out: TheRomance of the Pyrenees, The Horrors of Oakendale Abbey, The Orphan ofthe Castle, The Castle of Otranto, The Mines of Wielitzka, The Rock of Glotz-den . . . in 82 percent of the cases, the y is a space: a person defined by aspace, or, most frequent of all, a space defined by another space. The Castleof Otranto: a spatial noun specified by a place name.There are many intriguing traits to gothic titles—this

at least: equally well, in a different key. Otherwise, whatis the point

institution of themarket takes the code, and compresses it: typically, to a proper name. Li-braries couldn’t waste space on a catalogue page; they didn’t want anyconfusion between this novel and that; the spine of the book had onlyroom for a few words anyway; and

hen, as the number of new novelskept increasing, each of them had inevitably a much smaller window ofvisibility on the market, and it became vital for a title to catch quickly andeffectively the eye of the public. Summaries were not good at that. Theywere good at describing a book in isolation: but when it came to standingout in a crowded marketplace, short titles were better—much easier toremember, to begin with (but not only). That’s

les are not just a good research tool: they are important inthemselves—Walter Scott’s first word as a novelist, literally, was “title”(“The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and soliddeliberation”)1—and they are important because, as Claude Duchet hasput it, they are “a coded message—in a market situation.”2 A code,