All Things Goth
HUM 2212: British and American
Literature I
Fall 2012
Dr. Perdigao
September 12-14, 2012
Gothic (Up)Rising
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1750: Horace Walpole’s redesign of Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, England,
begins—“Gothic revival” in architecture
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1764: The Castle of Otranto published in England; reissued in 1765 with new
preface and subtitle A Gothic Story
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1773: John and Anna Letitia Aikin publish Gothic fragment “Sir Bertram” with
essay “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror” (xviii)
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1775: American War of Independence begins
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1786: William Beckford publishes the “oriental Gothic” Vathek in Paris
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1789: French Revolution begins
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1790: Ann Radcliffe publishes The Romance of the Forest; Burke publishes
Reflections on the Revolution in France
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1792: Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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1793: Beheading of Louis XVI in Paris; Reign of Terror
Gothic (Up)Rising
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1794: Radcliffe publishes The Mysteries of Udolpho
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1796: Lewis’s The Monk published (same time he enters Parliament)
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1797: Coleridge’s review of The Monk; Walpole dies
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1798: Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads
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1799: End of French Revolution; Napoleon Bonaparte made Consul in France
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1800: Largest year for number of Gothic novels published in England; second
edition of Lyrical Ballads published, with Wordsworth’s anti-Gothic “Preface”
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1815: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo and exiled
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1817: Byron’s Gothic “Dramatic Poem” Manfred published
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1818: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein published; Jane Austen’s
counter-Gothic Northanger Abbey published after her death in 1817
Gothic (Up)Rising
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1835: Edgar Allan Poe begins series of Gothic stories in Baltimore, collected in
Tales of the Arabesque and Grotesque in 1839
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1837: Victoria becomes queen of England
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1845: Poe publishes “The Raven,” second volume of Tales; dies in 1849
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1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter published, with “The Custom
House”
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1886: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde published
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1890: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray published in Lippincott’s
Magazine, expanded in book form in 1891
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1891: Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes “The Yellow Wallpaper” in the New
England Magazine
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1897: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
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(Hogle xvii-xxv)
Gothic (Up)Rising
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Gothic as post-medieval and post-Renaissance phenomenon
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Roots in ancient prose and romances to Shakespearean tragedy and comedy
(Hogle 1)
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Romantics’ use of medieval romance, Gothic as genre developed from tradition
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Begins with “A Gothic Story” written by Walpole, The Castle of Otranto,
counterfeit medieval tale (1)
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1790s rise of Gothic literature
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1790s and 1890s as fin de siècle
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Resurgence of Gothic fiction
Trending
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Antiquated space—castle, foreign palace, abbey, vast prison, subterranean crypt,
graveyard, primeval frontier or island, large house or theatre, aging city or urban
underworld, decaying storehouse, factory, laboratory, public building (Hogle 2)
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Ghosts, specters, monsters that rise from the antiquated space, sometimes
invading it from alien realms, to “manifest unresolved crimes or conflicts that
can no longer be successfully buried from view” (2)
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Between earthly laws of conventional reality and the possibilities of the
supernatural (2)
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Traditionally, middle class readership—ideas about the force of the past and the
forces of change that resists that past, a tug-of-war
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Confrontation of what is buried, the “unconscious”
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Influence on Freudian theory
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Anxieties about power, crowds, revolution (603)
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Role of women—women writers, Minerva Press
Trending
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Influence of the Gothic on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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Questions of influence—some Romantic writers rejected trend, its predictable
plots (585)
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Ideas of high and low culture
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Idea of readers as zombies, feeding the trend
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Austen and new incarnations?
Trending
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Horace Walpole (1717-1797), son of British prime minster
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Remodeled Strawberry Hill estate, designed “Gothick,” towers, turrets, arched
doors
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The Castle of Otranto (1764)
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Claimed to be translated historical text from 12th or 13th century
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As Blair Witch Project (or Don Quixote)
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Manfred, prince, son Conrad to wed Isabella
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Grandfather’s portrait (587)
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Chase, subterraneous cavern, extinguished light (589)
Walpole’s Strawberry Hill
http://www.booktryst.com/2009/12/strawberry-hill-forever.html
Literature and Theory
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Anna Letitia Aikin and John Aikin
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Question interest in the gothic
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Pity
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Back to Aristotle
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1773 essay
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Hamlet, Macbeth, supernatural in tradition
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“Sir Bertrand”
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Gothic setting—mansion as focus
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Vault, key
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Animated statues, coffin, dream transformation
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Lost words at end
A Fallen Empire?
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William Beckford (1760-1844)
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Vathek (1786)
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Arabian setting
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Fonthill Abbey, Gothic palace
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Like Ozymandias, studying fallen empire, decadence, self-delusion
Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey
http://www.fonthill.co.uk/the-estate/fonthill-history
Reigning
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Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) as “Queen of Terror”
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The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
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Published five novels between 1789-1797, 6th published posthumously in 1826
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Castle, revealed
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Descriptions—setting
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Gloomy, sublime, melancholy
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Fits Aikins’ description—fear, curiosity, excitement
Church and State
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Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818)
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The Monk (1796)
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Ambrosio, abbot of monastery in Madrid
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Seduced by Matilda, disguised as Rosario
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Attempt to rape Antonia
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Ideas about power, the threat of power
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Patriarchal order?
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Appeal to Madonna—resist earthly seduction for her
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Narcissism
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Picture haunting character (Otranto, Dorian)
MirrorMask?
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His fears, though he is the villain
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Gender roles—pursuer, fear
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Elvira’s nightmare
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Antonia on precipice
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Sublime, fear
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Will “unmask” him
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Coleridge’s attack on The Monk
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Mistakes Ambrosio for Antonio
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Praises imagination (609) but focuses on defects and errors
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“low” and “vulgar” (610)