The Gothic Novel

Original Meanings of Gothic

The Goths, an early Germanic tribe (3rd-5th/8th century)

Germanic

Medieval

Gothic architecture (in Europe 12th-16th century; characteristics, high pointed archs and vaults, flying buttresses, intricate recesses)

The Gothic Novel / Romance

Rise in the 18th century, flourishing in the mid-19th century

Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story (1764) - prototype

William Beckford, Vathek (1786) medieval setting, Orientalism, erotic, sadistic

Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796) rape, incest, murder, diabolism

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818) parody

Gothic Settings

Middle Ages medieval settings

Catholic countries (Italy or Spain)

Gloomy castles, ruins, dungeons, monestaries, subterranean passages, torture chambers, sliding panels, trap doors, etc.

Gothic Story Elements

Sufferings imposed on an innocent heroine by a cruel and lustful villain (damsel-in-distress or virtue-in-distress motif)

Sensational, supernatural occurences, ghosts, mysterious disappearences

Aims and Effects

Reaction against the Age of Reason/Enlightenment

Evokation of thrill and terror through mystery and horror

Exposing irrational and perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors lying beneath the orderly surface of the civilised mind

Subversive and anarchical tendencies

Other Forms of the Gothic Novel

Other types of fiction lacking the exotic setting of the earlier romances, but developing a brooding atmosphere of gloom and terror

Uncanny, macabre, or violent events

Often aberrent psychological states

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Blends with Other Genres

Vampire Story: Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) Ghost Story: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

(1898) Detective/Mystery Story: Edgar Allan Poe: The

Tell-Tale Heart (1843) Victorian Novel: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

(1847); Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847), Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852/3), and Great Expectations (1861)

Horror Story

The Gothic Novel as a Reaction against Neoclassicism and the Age of Reason

Contexts and Questions: The Gothic Novel A Prominent Literary Genre in

English Literary History The Gothic Novel as a literary genre genre theory,

defining constituents, shared features, mixed genres Der englische Schauerroman im Spannungsfeld von

Aufklrung und Romantik (cf. Ingeborg Weber 1983: 9ff.) Important contexts: (1) Neoclassicism and Enlightenment,

(2) Romanticism, (3) Other anti-rational movements in the 18th century, e.g. the rise of the Sentimental Novel (Literature of Sensibility)

Further reasons (social/cultural) for the rise of the Gothic novel?

The influence of the Gothic novel in literary/cultural history?

The first half of the 18th century:

The Age of Reason: emphasis on reason and rationality, the ideals of the Enlightenment

Neoclassicism: celebrating the aesthetics and poetics from classical antiquity (Aristotle, Horace, Vergil, Ovid)

Imitatio naturae: the imitation of nature in terms of its divine order, laws, rules and regularities

the poets innovation focuses on the formal level, style, diction etc.

=> focus on objectivity/reality instead of subjectivity

The second half of the 18th century:

reversal of the relationship between subject and object => focus on subjectivity/the subject/the poet

importance of the poets imagination as his creative source

revaluation of nature and its wild, sublime, frightening aspects

importance of feelings and emotions, irrationality, irregularity

=> Anti-Classical and Pre-Romantic movements in the

second half of the 18th century form the basis for the rise of the Sentimental novel and the Gothic novel

With regard to the literary developments and traditions outlined so far, where would you position Mary Shelleys

Frankenstein?