Gothic - overview (Punter) - early draft

Gothic - overview (Punter) - early draft

1. ORIGINS

   • Castle of Otranto (1764)
     • Horace Walpole
       • Strawberry House
         • Mock Gothic house, Twickenham
   • Heyday = 1780's-90's
     • Ann Radcliffe
       • Mysteries of Udolpho
       • Terror: psychological. Can be uplifting
     • Matthew Lewis
       • The Monk
       • Horror: visceral, explicit. Chils the soul
   • End of first wave = early 19th century
     • Melmoth the Wanderer

2. DEVELOPMENT

   • Gothic afterlife through 19th century
   • Flowering at end of 19th century
     • Dracula
     • Jekyll and Hyde
     • Picture of Dorian Gray
     • Age of decadence
   • Continues to present day (books/films/TV)
     • Stephen King
     • American Gothic

3. LABYRINTHS

   • Can't find way out
   • No real maps
   • Imprisonment
     • Example: Harker in 'Dracula' Feudal space unfamiliar with
     • Protagonist in title story, TBC
       • Memory of the past still exerts its power
   • Claustrophbia
   • Falling through trapdoor to depths
   • Fear of being buried alive: Poe
     • "The Premature Burial"
   • What do they mean?
     • Persistence of the past
     • Fear of being locked up inside ourselves. Doomed to explore that space
     • Need to go into the 'basement' What will we find?

4. SUBLIME

   • Late 18th century
   • Edmund Burke, 'Of the sublime and beautful'
   • Experience of gazing at mountainscape
   • Viewer feels puny compared to nature
   • Actions happen in wild places
     • Frankenstein ends in frozen wastes

5. FRANKENSTEIN

   • Why do we need frame narrative in 'Frankenstein'?
     • Because of the sublime - finishes in frozen wastes puts Frankenstein against huge landscape
   • Deals with transgression between human and divine
   • Deals with transgression - stepping over boundaries
     • between human and divine.
     • between men and women
     • between different social classes
     • doesn't respect clear boundaries
     • breaking taboos

6. PROTOTYPE FOR GOTHIC HERO

   • Starts with 'The Monk'
     • Ambrosia does wicked deeds
     • Reader feels sympathy because driven on by Matilda as well as condemning him
   • Forbidden knowledge
     • Begins with Adam and Eve
     • Osbcure/hidden knowledge = occult
     • Rosicrucians and Illuminati
     • That which is taboo belongs to the Gods - Promoetheus steals from gods
     • As with Prometheus - Frankenstein takes what belongs to God - ultimate taboo to bring back from dead
     • Forbidden knowledge now = science and technology

7. VAMPIRISM

   • Vampires and ghosts - Blurs boundary between death and life
   • Death is curse or blessing
     • Cursed wandering figure there from beginning of Gothic e.g. Ancient Mariner
   • Origins for vampire = John Polidori
     • Physician to Lord Byron based character on him
       • 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'
         • Creates prototype of Byronic hero
           • Dracula = Last member of noble race
             • Great Defender of faith
           • Frankenstein - scientific curiosity admirable
           • Similar with 'Wuthering Heights' and Heathcliff - reader's feelings mixed - refuses to succumb to normal boundaries
     • After Polidori - Sheridan Le Fanu 'Carmilla'
     • Myths and legends from the past e.g. Vlad the Impaler
   • Reason for appearance?
     • Fear of being out of control
     • Conjured by desire
     • Women vulnerable on eve of wedding - before settling down and respectability

8. MOTIFS = REVENGE & INHERITANCE

   • Inheritance
     • Troubled inheritance seen in Castle of Otranto
     • sins of the fathers revisited upon the child
   • Revenge
     • Can you get revenge without succumbing to the sins of the person you want revenge upon?
       • How to get revenge without repeating history see revolutions e.g. French Revolution
   • Joining these themes
     • Relation between social classes. Castles = sites of privilege
     • Late C18th - early C19th m/c coming into power but aristocracy not willing to lay down
       • Explains figures like Dracula last of aristocratic line

9. RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

   • Desires don't go away - sink down and then reconfigured
     • During moments of pressure
     • Or present in dreams
   • Freudian idea

10. PLACE OF WOMEN

    • In early Gothic same pattern women =
      • innocent
      • Persecuted on the run
      • Very little power until rescued.
    • Later Gothic women gain more agency e.g. Marian Halcombe in 'Women in White' = not attractive but intelligent and resourceful
    • By 1970's and 'The Bloody Chamber' women have agency

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