![]() Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. For gothic novels are above all about the creation of fear- fear in the characters represented, fear in the reader- and they accomplish this through their engagement with the aesthetic of the sublime or some variant of it” ( v). Further, and importantly, these acts are often violent, and always frightening. The transgressive acts at the heart of gothic fiction generally focus on corruption in, or resistance to, the patriarchal structures that shaped the country’s political life and its family life, and gender roles within those structures come in for particular scrutiny. “The stories of gothic novels are always stories of transgression. “In English Gothic prose, the Mystic is distinguished as a genre feature, connected with the motif of mystery, belief in a supernatural power, irrationality as a certain way of world cognition, grounded on the atmosphere of fear aggravation in the face of unknown danger.” “Mysterious Fears: Lexical Means of Expressing the Conceptual Category of the Mystic In English Gothic Narration of the 18th Century.” Lege Artis (De Gruyter Open), vol. Gothic literature took that further, involving horror, terror, death, omens, the supernatural, and heroines in distress.” ![]() Dark Romanticism draws from darker elements of the human psyche, the evil side of spiritual truth. “Originating in England and Germany in the later part of the 18th century, grew out of Romanticism, a strong reaction against the Transcendental Movement. It is always to be found as a concatenation of dualities: old-fashioned as opposed to modern, barbaric as opposed to the civilized, crudity as opposed to elegance etc.” (p. The extensions in meaning mirror the word “Gothic” as retaining a stock of connotations, the values placed upon them being under constant transformation during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. ![]() “Whereas the classical was well-ordered, simple, pure and offered a set of cultural models to be followed, the Gothic was chaotic, ornate, convoluted, representing excess and exaggeration, the product of the wild and uncivilized. ![]() International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro), Vol. “Main Features of the English Gothic Novel”. In its various psychic explorations and conceptualizations of self-consciousness as a type of onerous ‘Fall’ out of innocence into knowledge and self-division, the Gothic is typically Romantic.”Įmandi, E. Barfoot extrapolates, ‘The Gothic highlights cultural encroachment and the invasion of boundaries, and dramatizes the disturbances caused by geographical dislocation, as well as by the rift between the secular and the sacred, innocence and guilt, the beautiful and the ugly, surface and depth. History of the Gothic: Gothic Literature 1764-1824. Now this is a term that comes from Sigmund Freud – so something that’s new but that also takes us back to something, either in our own psychological past, or something in the world that’s archaic.”ĭavison, Carol Margaret. The thing that you think is dead but comes back vividly alive in the present…One really useful term for thinking about Gothic writing, is the uncanny. “ wants to see the relationship between the modern world and the past – not as one of evolution or development – but of sudden juxtaposition and often violent conflict, in which the past erupts within the present and deranges it and one of the most powerful motifs of that is, of course, the ghost. Their concern is with vice: protagonists are selfish or evil adventures involve decadence or crime.”īowen, John. “Gothic texts are, overtly but ambiguously, not rational, depicting disturbances of sanity and security, from superstitious belief in ghosts and demons, displays of uncontrolled passion, violent emotion or flights of fancy to portrayals of perversion and obsession…Gothic texts are not good in moral, aesthetic or social terms. However, the actual effect of the Gothic narrative is to undermine the certainties of secure possession, the kind of certainty that is popularized as ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law.’īotting, Fred. The ostensible project of the Gothic is to return to the idyllic moment of secure and undisrupted possession. “Indeed, the typical moment of the English Gothic text is the moment after the fall from the idyllic past in which possession had been securely fixed. Property and Power in English Gothic Literature. ![]() Check out how others have defined the Gothic!Īnolik, Ruth Bienstock. ![]()
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