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Title: Gothic features
Description: Some typical stylistic features of Gothic literature
Description: Some typical stylistic features of Gothic literature
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Features of the Gothic
GOTHIC TIMELINE
1764
The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole)
Combines the supernatural and horrific
...
Manfred wants an heir but
the son dies so wants to marry his son’s widow
...
Walpole pretended it had been translated because he was saying the unsayable
BRANCHES OUT TO HORROR AND TERROR
Ann Radcliffe: ‘When the mind has once begun to yield to the weakness of superstition,
trifles impress it with the force of conviction
...
He’s corrupted and then turns satanic
...
The first
vampire
1816- Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
Could be gothic, very science fiction
...
1840- Edgar Allen Poe
Poe’s characters suffer psychological terror- mad men and unreliable narrators
Is Gothic more physical threats or fears in the mind?
Victorian Gothic- Dickens Great Expectations
1847- Wuthering Heights (E
...
Features of the Gothic
The Supernatural and Sublime
Chapter 4- Victor says he is pushed by a supernatural force
Dracula is non human
Ghosts and ghouls
All common elements
Uncanny
Resembles something we know or recognise, but don’t at the same time
...
Isolation
The creature’s isolation
...
Nature
Pathetic fallacy used a lot as manifestation of emotion (eg thunderstorm)
Pursuit of knowledge/ the unknown
Victor is obsessed with the creature,but terrified at the same time as he can never truly
understand life and death as he has no control
...
Surprise is important for Gothic novels
...
Readers were enthralled
...
Mysterious
elements contributed to the atmosphere a lot
...
EG- Jane Eyre
...
Jane eventually discovers that this is Rochester’s mad wife who has been hidden
Dehumanisation and marginalisation of the mad
...
In this realm the ordinary is displaced by the extraordinary, the normal becomes
the paranormal and the unconscious is as vivid, vital and valid as the conscious
...
Forests,
wildernesses, extremes of nature predominate
...
The improbable is entirely possible and the impossible becomes even more
probable
...
It is similarly difficult to navigate the morality of this new state
...
The Gothic has somehow seduced the reader so that he or she
is complicit in engaging with whatever he or she might encounter
...
Journeying into the unknown
So, the narrative of the text often involves journeys into the unknown and this is a metaphorical
enactment of the act of ‘reading’ text itself
...
Gothic texts were, in many was, a reaction
against the rational discourse that marked the literature and philosophy of the age of reason
...
The boundaries of logic and
sense were breached and, instead, the sensational and the sensual were celebrated
...
As
such they became a way of subverting the establishment
...
The power and passion of Gothic
literature seemed eminently suited to the iconoclasts who wished to challenge the status quo
...
The heroes are those who seek to overturn this authority and
establish the freedom to develop their individuality
...
Alison Milbank article
In the 19th Century, attention moves to the horrors that lurk in our psyche
...
Title: Gothic features
Description: Some typical stylistic features of Gothic literature
Description: Some typical stylistic features of Gothic literature